Ultimate supply of uranium is believed to be sufficient for at least the next 85 years

[dkf]

In 2005, seventeen countries produced concentrated uranium oxides, with Canada (27.9% of world production) and Australia (22.8%) being the largest producers and Kazakhstan (10.5%), Russia (8.0%), Namibia (7.5%), Niger (7.4%), Uzbekistan (5.5%), the United States (2.5%), Ukraine (1.9%) and China (1.7%) also producing significant amounts.<42> The ultimate supply of uranium is believed to be very large and sufficient for at least the next 85 years<36> although some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century.<43>

Some claim that production of uranium will peak similar to peak oil. Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Ian D. MacGregor point out that uranium deposits seem to be log-normal distributed. There is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade." <44> In another words, there is very little high grade ore and proportionately much more low grade ore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. When will the sun burn out ?

[Deja Q]

2. Can uranium not be enriched?

[formercia]

10. It doesn't increase the amount of fissile material

just concentrates what's there.

The next fuel phase will use Plutonium mixed with U-238 (MOX).Since the spent fuel contains more plutonium than it began with, as long as there is a supply of U-238, the fuel cycle can go on for a long time.

The Japanese have hundreds of tons of Plutonium recovered from spent fuel in storage.

[havocmom]

3. water, on the other hand, seems to be getting scarce

Takes water to cool those nuclear plants, doesn't it?

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

7. Any plant that needs to water to cool it or has a heat source can

generate steam power on the side.

[anigbrowl]

12. Nah, the oceans are full of it

desalination is not that energy-intensive; if you're producing electricity in a power plant you can treat the energy required for desalination as overhead. I wouldn't say this is a critical engineering hurdle.

[havocmom]

14. So, ALL nuclear power plants are on the beach?

Hmmm, didn't know that. Also think beaches are subject to some problems that are best kept from nuke plants.

Face it, they ain't safe, efficient nor welcome.

[anigbrowl]

15. Well, I was thinking of pipelines actually

My point is that water availability is an issue but not an insoluble one. I just don't share your antipathy to nuclear power, and I do think it has a role to play along with other alternative energy sources.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Oh boyee.

Here comes the doom and gloom about "Peak Uranium" from the people invested in that sector.

I look forward to the notices that we have reached the Peak Speculator Event.

[bananas]

5. That's based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate.

If you double the number of reactors, you're down to 42.5 years.
If you try to scale it up by a factor of ten, you've only got 8.5 years.

[JackRiddler]

11. Shhh! Who asked you to state the obvious?

They said 85, it must be 85!!!

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. Running out really is not much of an issue

Nuclear power reactors work by using low-level nuclear decay chain reactions to heat water to steam, much like coal and oil plants burn petroleum to create steam. The pressurized steam is used to turn turbines, which turn generators that produce the electricity. Other radioactive elements --thorium has been named as a likely candidate -- can be used to maintain similar chain reactions. Our current reliance on uranium comes from the fact that it is easier (read less expensive) to keep a chain reaction of uranium going than it would be to keep a chain reaction of thorium going. But then, extraction of petroleum from oil shale was once too expensive to bother with, too.

Also, the technology exists to create uranium using the same basic procedure for creating plutonium. Just take a likely element and bombard it with smaller atoms until they stick together. In theory, we could mass produce as much thorium and uranium as we want.

[bananas]

8. That's the problem - it keeps getting more expensive.

Fission won't be able to compete with renewables and fusion.

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. Actually, I don't see expense as being much of an issue either

When renewable energy sources become relatively cost-effective, industry and infrastructure will at long last switch to renewable energy sources. As for fusion, we need to develop the technology for that, first.

[anigbrowl]

13. You should look into pebble reactors

Part of the reason past nuclear capital costs were so high was that every station was designed as a bespkoe project and so there were tremendous up front costs. There's a lot of reason to think the future lies in smaller plants with greater levels of mass production. Instead of tuning designs for maximum efficiency (and cost), it's safer and cheaper to tune them for commodification. In other words, to start thinking about Honda Civics instead of Porsche 911s.

Fusion isn't happening any time soon. Renewables are, and have many advantages, but consistency isn't one of them in most cases. Well, there's geothermal, but that has huge front-loaded capital costs as well.

[bananas]

16. The smaller plants are still expensive

ITER is supposed to have commercial fusion ready around mid-century,
so by the time we need to reprocess fission waste,
it'll be cheaper to deploy fusion.

There are a number of small reactor designs,
but they still are expensive as an electricity source,
they may be cost-effective as an industrial heat source,
and might be used to melt oil out of tar sands and shale rock.

Expert sees process-heat niche for PBMR, but bearish on its power-generation competitiveness

By: Terence Creamer
Published: 17 Jun 08 - 16:30

It was unlikely that the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR), the new generation nuclear technology being pursued by South Africa's State-owned PBMR Company, would be competitive as a standalone power-generation platform, International Nuclear Energy Academy chairperson Bertrand Barré said during a presentation, in Johannesburg, on Tuesday. However, he added that it could play an important niche role in the production of process heat, which could be used in the manufacture of synthetic fuels for use in the transport sector - thus helping to displace increasingly expensive crude oil.

<snip>

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=135871

<snip>

MONEYWEB: We have seen the numbers; they are pretty well known. But the point has to be: how much of the energy cake can nuclear take into the future? In South Africa, after this current generation of coal-fired power stations there are going to be no more. They are all going to be nuclear. I guess that would be something that would happen in other parts of the world, but how much can nuclear take away from coal?

BERTRAND BARRÉ: Well, I would say it depends on your horizon.

MONEYWEB: Say, 50 years.

BERTRAND BARRÉ: In 50 years, really, nuclear can generate 40% at least of the world electricity, which is not the world energy.

MONEYWEB: And at the moment?

BERTRAND BARRÉ: At the moment it is 16%, so there is a big jump ahead, but it's possible. It's not as if I were assuming that nuclear could supply everything. It's not all of energy, it's not even all of electricity. A reasonable target would be 40% of electric power - no more. It's already quite an ambitious target.

<snip>

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page55?oid=211142&sn=Detail

published by WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor on May 3, 2007
STATUS OF THE PBMR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

<snip>

Conclusion

The record of the PBMR venture in meeting time and cost deadlines is appalling. The estimated cost of the demonstration phase had escalated by a factor of more than seven by 2005. It seems unlikely that when an updated version of this cost is produced, the cost will not have risen again.

The estimated time when commercial orders could be placed has slipped from 2004 to probably no earlier than 2020.

There have been continual promises that new foreign partners would be brought in to the project to add expertise and share the risk but five years after Exelon withdrew, no new partners have been recruited. Indeed, all the original partners have either withdrawn or reduced their stake: Exelon withdrew in 2002; BNFL contributed only 15 per cent of the costs instead of the 22.5 per cent it was contracted to contribute; IDC reduced its stake from 25 per cent to 13 per cent. It has now emerged that even Eskom, usually seen as a committed supporter of the program was, as early as 2002, concerned about the riskiness of the venture and was looking for politically viable ways to withdraw from the project.

The program was launched on the basis of it being an export project that would bring a stream of income to South Africa from export sales. This promise has also not been fulfilled and the any reasonably likely export orders disappeared when Exelon withdrew in 2002.

<snip>

http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/655/5796.php

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pbmrfactsheet.htm

<snip>

"INHERENTLY SAFE" GERMAN PBMR COVERS UP RADIATION ACCIDENT AND SHUTS DOWN

As Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb said, "Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system." Accidents can and do happen in the inherently dangerous business of splitting the atom. Human error occurs at every level of development, construction and operation of the process. Material and component failures along with aging can break down or defeat operational and safety systems.

In 1985, the experimental THTR-300 PBMR on the Ruhr in Hamm-Uentrop, Germany was also offered as accident proof--with the same promise of an indestructible carbon fuel cladding capable of retaining all generated radioactivity. Following the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and graphite fire in Ukraine, the West German government revealed that on May 4, the 300-megawatt PBMR at Hamm released radiation after one of its spherical fuel pebbles became lodged in the pipe feeding the fuel to the reactor. Operator actions during the event caused damage to the fuel cladding.

Radioactivity was released with the escaping helium and radioactive fallout was deposited as far as two kilometers from the reactor. The fallout in the region was high enough to initially be blamed on Chernobyl. Government officials were then alerted by scientists in Freiburg who reported that as much as 70 % of the region’s contamination was not of the type of radiation leaking hundreds of miles away in Ukraine. Dismayed by an attempt to conceal the reactor malfunction and confronted with mounting public pressure in light of the Chernobyl accident only days prior, the state ordered the reactor to close pending a design review.

Continuing technical problems including a lack of quality control resulting in damage to unused fuel pebbles and radiation-induced bolt head failures in the reactor’s gas channels resulted in the unit’s closure in late 1988. Citing doubts about reliability, the government refused to further subsidize utility funding and instead approved plans for decommissioning the reactor.

<snip>