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The Coming Uranium Crisis
tcd004 writes "MIT reports that the world is running out of fuel for our nuclear reactors due to production limitations and an aging infrastructure. Nuclear power has gained popularity as a carbon-free energy source in recent years, but Dr. Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at MIT's Center for International Studies, warned that fuel scarcity could drive up prices and kill the industry before it gets back on its feet. Passport has pulled together some interesting numbers: there are 440 reactors currently in operation and 82 new plants under construction. The demand for fuel has driven the price of uranium up more than 40% in the last few months — 900% over the last decade. You can follow the spot price for a pound of uranium. "
But they have free Super Saver Shipping, so it balances out.
... Uranium's not all that abundant, we've known that for years. But the breeder reactors they're building in India can convert thorium to fissile material as a byproduct of their operation. There's enough potential energy in the available thorium supply to run the planet for an awfully long time. Whether it's economical to do so at present is another matter, but for long-term security there's no better consumable.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The cost of Uranium is not the major cost of nuclear power, its the containment, disposal and safety that costs. If it goes up 400% big deal, even 40000%, so what. Plus fast breader reactors of course, but load of other /. users will mention that.
I guess that's better than Shitting Polenium-210!!!!!
BaDumpDump!!!!
1/ Find a country with lots of uranium.
2/ Invade in the name of freedom.
3/ Profit!
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63
the core fo the earth was a huge liquid uranium sphere...
hopefully the people behind these "findings" aren't related to the fossil fuel industry in any way... or to any alternative power... in other words.. FUD (?)
God help us. Could the world conceivably face a time in the future when we don't even have enough Uranium left to wipe out the human race? [shudders]
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Then we should concentrate on reactors with higher breeding ratios, as the exhaustion of mineable uranium can be slowed down significantly, and that is worth it despite the negative political implications of the ease of production of weapons-grade material in these reactors.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
And they said I was stupid to invest in all this uranium when it was cheap! Now, if I could just stop coughing up blood long enough to take some photos for eBay, I'll be set for life...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
this will lead to renewed interest in breeder reactors. Recycling nuclear waste is a good thing.
...does this mean Iran does have a legitimate reason to have a nuclear program after all?
Here in Canada, Eh, they are pushing nuclear power as a means of cleaner and safer power as opposed to coal.
Good thing its not going to be like Gasoline where prices just keep going Up and Up and Up.
"Well we thought it was a good idea before we realized it cost a lot of money, but by then we had already spent a lot of money so we just had to go on spending more money, but you know we can just charge the average consumer more and make it all back so its still good."
Douches.
"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius." -Heinlein
Uranium prices have spiked in recent years, as TFA shows. However, comparing prices today with a decade or so back ignores the huge amount of uranium that hit the market after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A more honest comparison would go back several decades.
Another point to consider is that while current steam based nuclear power plants do burn uranium down to an unusable 'waste product', that waste is actually quite useful with reprocessing. So, while it is true that were the world only to burn low-level enriched uranium the world would run out quickly, it is not true that with a more modern burn-reclamation cycle that fuel shortages would persist.
Recycle the weapons then
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
In related news, in Finland there is growing political momentum to reform the mining laws to make it harder to make claims, because several foreign companies have started prospecting for uranium in Finland. The geology of Finland apparently is such that there is almost certainly lots of uranium somewhere down there. Now that there are mining claims and preliminary tests going on, all the NIMBYs have come out of the woodwork, fueled by the horrible idea of nuclear material being dug up around their backyards.
I was really surprised to find that something so powerful and dangerous as 1 lb. of Uranium is selling in the $60-$80 USD range. Does anyone know how much energy a typical modern reactor squeezes out of a pound of uranium?
We (humanity) have been living beyond our means for a while, but all forms of energy is going to get more expensive - i.e. all products are going to get more expensive. This is going to mean a decrease in standards of living, for just about everyone. We might as well get used to the idea.
You can however lessen the impact of this on your life. If you have half a brain, look at ways to cut your energy costs NOW. If the energy bills for your house starts to skyrocket and you don't have the money to insulate the attic, get energy windows and/or install a heatpump... you are going to be in deep shit, aren't you?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
But I think the point of fissile materials running out is set to be quite moot. Fusion reactor output has been increasing exponentially since its inception, and it should not be terribly long before it will be a viable alternative to fission power. Once we're set into fusion, it is basically impossible to run out of fuel. Fusion reactors run off of deuterium, which accounts for about 0.015% of all hydrogen. That is a crapload of deuterium! Consider that the oceans are 2/3 hydrogen (more or less) and heavy water is fairly easy to separate. (*actually, a tritium-deuterium reaction is more preferable for future reactors, but the tritium is refined from the deuterium--there is no natural abundance of tritium since it has a half life of ~17 years)
As a worst case scenario, we can always mine other planetary bodies. But despite the article's hype, don't expect us to run out of reactor fuel anytime this century.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
There was also a price spike in the late 70s. It seems to me that thirty years later a price spike would lead values that are, you know, higher.
What were the peak values of the 70s spike if adjusted for inflation?
Saw a news-segment on tv a couple of days ago. The reporter stated that Sweden might have anything from below one percent of the worlds uranium, up to almost 20 percent.
However, the villagers in a nearby village of one place where initial test-drills was supposed to start soon, was not happy. They were very worried both about loosing tourists and that it might have a bad effect on the reindeers.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Uranium reserves are something that exist for the most part in Western friendly nations, at least more so than oil. With Australia, Canada and the US being the in the countries with the top 5 most recoverable amounts of Uranium and South Africa and Kazakhstan being the other two nations.
At least this means it'll be far harder for our Western nations to be held ransom by various dictators and little Hitlers in the Middle East, yes Ahmadinejad I'm talking about you.
Scientists:
Instead of cutting up millions of hamsters every year in the name of research, do this instead:
Buy millions of hamster wheels and hook the little devils up to some turbines.
Not only will this solve the nuclear power crisis, but you can use the spare cash to buy loads of PS3s to run Holding@Home on, thus curing Cancer at the same time.
Summation 2
From reading the summary it makes it sound like we are running out of natural supplies of uranium. This is not the case, and if we implement breeder or burner reactors, will not be the case for a very long time. The problem is that we don't have much uranium mining and processing capability in this country, since the outlook for future growth of nuclear power has been low the last couple decades for political reasons. So that would have to be ramped significantly as we build new plants, and MIT is worried that it is not happening at a fast enough rate, and may hamper further growth.
I think there is an assumption made, almost unconsciously, that if our other power sources fail we could always "fall back" on nuclear if we wanted to take the risk. It's interesting to see that large scale nuclear power could have similar infrastructure problems to renewables - invest a lot or don't end up viable.
This article focuses primarily on the economic questions of scale-up. I would be curious to know how much uranium is theoretically recoverable and how long it would last us. Perhaps there is so much of it that we could live off of it indefinitely (particularly with waste reprocessing) but I don't know the numbers.
What this article DOES demonstrate, even better than renewables, is the need to sustain and increase basic research into ALL energy problems and technologies. Solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, and various storage techniques like hydrogen will be needed; it's not a one solution fits all kind of equation. Nor will the solutions just "be there" when we need them, unless we pay attention and take steps to ensure that they are. Even nuclear cannot be taken for granted.
Also - in the long term human beings will consume all available power either by technological/standard of living increases, population increases, or both. There isn't going to be a solution which will be "enough" - we will ALWAYS find something to do with it. Just the scale-up going on right now is putting a healthy demand on resources of all sorts, and that's just the short term. In hundreds or thousands of years there will be some very fundamental problems that need solving, and I think we need to get started working on them sooner rather than later. These things don't happen magically, they take hard and long work.
Business is not to be expected to think long term, certainly not in the current environment. That should be the job of government research funding, and there needs to be a LOT more of it. Perhaps the difficulties of scaling up nuclear power will help to wake people up - it would be nice to do the research on new power technologies in something other than economic crisis mode.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
So we'll just wind up depending on Iran and Russia to produce our uranium, and they'll control the energy market for the next century like they did with oil. All our old bombs are made of oil (plastic and explosives), so the transition to the new bombs in the hands of our historically worst enemies should be unsurprising.
--
make install -not war
By the time Uranium runs out we will probably learn more about how to cause mass destruction with Fusion.
Requiring Deuterium, which is pretty abundant, its a lot more scary.
The hard part is getting the tritium needed for the reaction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28urani um.html
There are a lot of unused uranium mines out there, is basically what its saying. That does not address the fundamental problem though, which is that easily fissile uranium 235 exists in a finite quantity, and unless the world is willing to begin building commercial breeder reactors, the supply will run out, around the same time as current fossil fuel reserves if use continues at its current rate.
They summary says that the world is running out of Uranium. But the article it sites is saying a larger investment in Uranium production has to be made now in order to avoid short-term cost increases. It doesn't say anything about the actual amount of mine-able uranium in the ground.
I was surprised to find out you could buy uranium and other radioactive goodies (including the infamous Polonium-210) online without any sort of license. They have it here for example.
Every time someone advocates a move to nuclear fission, I have said the same thing: we are setting ourselves up for a peak-uranium crisis just like the peak-oil crisis we now face.
www.wavefront-av.com
I don't want to use less! I want more, more, more. I want to have the power consumption of a small city. Perhaps energetic shields around my house.
Since the dawn of environmentalism, we've been told to use less, deal with less, expect less. It isn't true. We've never run out of anything important and we never will. When something becomes expensive, there is an opportunity for creating wealth by providing a good or service. Some see crisis, others see opportunity. I see the market working to give me what I want and need.
It's a shame that we have energy shortages in the United States of America. Brown outs are not caused by supply and demand, but by environmentalists blocking us every step of the way. We'd have a thriving nuclear boom going on with electric cars if environmentalists hadn't opposed nuclear power plants.
The answer is more, not less. Drill, mine, process, distribute.
Reduce, recycle, reuse is a bottomless pit of scarcity.
Obvious: Buy uranium/gold mine stock. It can only go up. Gold and uranium is usually mined together.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If you want to keep your tinfoil hat on, you could argue that there are great similarities between the oil industry and the RIAA. Neither of them want new technology, regardless of what the public want or need.
Pining for the fjords
It's not carbon-free if mining & processing consumes carbon. I doubt there are many nuclear-powered trucks delivering fuel to the reactors.
Breeder reactors reuse spent nuclear fuel. They only need small amounts of fuel to keep the reaction going. However, what about the waste? Compared to a conventional reactor, how much radioactive waste do they produce?
The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) would have used 99.5% of the fuel. The remaining 0.5% of the waste would have had the characteristic of decaying to ore-levels of radiation within 300 years. That's nearly a 100-fold decrease in the amount of nuclear waste we'd have to deal with, and orders of magnitude shorter time for protecting the waste. The waste is also attractive from a non-proliferation standpoint
Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration defunded the IFR project almost immediately after taking office and killed it properly two years into the first term. After all, how can you count on donations from the NONUKES lobby if safe, responsible fission power is available?
Bush hasn't restarted the project either, so there's plenty of blame to go around in Republicrat circles.
We should finish the research and build at least one of these reactors at the Yucca Mountain site. There we can burn all of the incoming waste fuel, and light up Las Vegas or something with the energy. If it were only for waste disposal it would be a good idea, but once the research is done we also have a system for solving Global Warming. China is even interested but they're going with Pebble Bed Reactors since the IFR work wasn't finished. I'd be happy for them to finish the work, but perhaps they don't have the qualified staff. I abhor those who think Global Warming is man-made and dangerous and refuse to embrace technology like IFR. Even the founder of Greenpeace is a 'shill' for the nuclear industry - he recognizes you have to make choices, and none of them are perfect, but such is life. The choice matrix is simple if we want to get this solved this century: man-made global warming, nuclear, or agrarian society. Pick one.
I understand Bill Richardson groks these issues. I wish he'd come out in full support of solving our energy problems instead of beating around the bush on it. I'd definitely vote for him if he did, and I'm not in the habit of voting Democrat. Oh, and it also solves our little geopolitical security problem, depowers the middle east despots, and bolsters our economy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Does the price of raw uranium matter at all in the total cost of nuclear power? So the price of a pound of unprocessed uranium rose from $64 to $95. The price for processed reactor-grade uranium is $1,787. Methinks that price is all about processing and will barely be affected by the extra $30 for ore.
I'd wager that even the price of processed uranium is insignificant compared to the cost of operating a nuclear power plant and disposing of the waste. An increase of 50% in the price for ore will definitely not lead to an increase of 50% in the cost for power.
Higher ore prices will just lead to the mining of previously uneconomical deposits. I doubt that we're anywhere close to running out of uranium on Earth.
AlpineR
Really :D
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
The right tree would be the tree of fusion. I know the JET project has been a failure but once it does succeed in long term, safe and sustainable fusion we'll not run out of fuel anytime soon. There's lots of Duterium in the oceans out there.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Is it time to begin a series of arguments over whether we've hit Peak Uranium yet?
We have plenty of uranium and plutonium, if WE RECYCLE the spent fuel. Something like 80% of the uranium is not used due to the buildup of waste products that kill the reaction. Recycle the spent fuel, extract the uranium, and send it back into the reactor. This will have the added benefit of lowering the long term radiological risk of the waste.
Higher uranium prices means more uranium is being mined, more is invested in mining uranium so it increases the supply and stabilizes the price, although there is a lag effect. The spot uranium price doesn't matter, one should look at futures.
\u262D = \u5350
We'd never run out of fuel. However, would we all end up talking funny because of the helium pollution?
Folks, before you hop on a wishful bandwagon, how about making sure there is a wagon?
If we're running out of Uranium, we just need to switch to something we've got lots of; oil!
then we should make reactors out of rabbits.
i um.html
the new york times has an article today about the next run of prospectors scooping up claims, curiously enough. free registration etc. required to see
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28uran
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There's a lot of recoverable material in radioactive "waste" produced by power plants, but the expense of getting it back has, historically, been much more expensive than buying or producing new fissle material. Maybe with the increasing prices, we'll see more reprocessing, solving our waste issue and giving us a new supply. It's kind of like the high price of oil pushing new alternative energies.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
We have an abundance of fissile material. Let's just dismantle a couple hundred of our oldest warheads. There should be enough there to keep the electrons flowing for quite a while.
what more can i say...
Actually, the immediate supply problem is coming as a result of some floods and reduced stockpiles. The stockpiles became large because of the conversion of weapons to fuel. This reduced mining activity. You can read more here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28urani um.html.
s -selling-solar.html
On the other hand, there is a limited suppy of ore which makes reliance on nuclear power to avoid further gloabl warming a poor proposition. Converting current power production to all nuclear runs out the recoverable fuel before the new plants end their design lifetimes so nuclear would be much more expensive than anticipated at a lower level of use.
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Get Real! Go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I like them when I'm shoving them up your mom's ass while your dad watches and cries, you pathetic waste of oxygen. Hey, you know who hates gays? Closeted gays like you, that's who. You know who has no problem with gays? Straight people.
Give it up, your game is so weak people are going to think you're my sock puppet.
A moose once nuked my sister.
(I'm sorry, I'm sorry)
Do you think the people around Chernobyl had no idea what was happening?
Three Mile Island is an example of the system working. Nobody was injured, and no adverse health affects occurred.
And that was in 1979. (actually, this marks the 28th anniversary of the TMI accident) These days, reactors have much more stringent safety standards.
:(){
Why didn't I invest in weapons-grade uranium!? I would have made a 900% profit in the past for years!
I could just put it in crates in my apartment!
Heck, Marie Curie won awards for having uranium lying around and nothing bad ever came of her
this is such a good idea
The original generic sig.
No. Sorry, what you've said is simply not true. There is no reason that our standard of living needs to decrease. The human race is not living beyond its means. That's doomsday nonsense and not supported by any proper facts. Don't bother posting a link to some study done by environmentalist radicals - I don't believe them and neither does the scientific community at large. I'm sick of this sort of crap being spewed by the fringe elements of the environmentalist movement. Really, these sort of statements - "There's too many people", "We have to reduce our standard of living", "Humanity is a cancer", etc. expose the real misanthropy that is inherent among the most extreme members of this movement. I'm glad the opinions of these people don't carry much weight with the public at large. The fringe members of the environmentalist movement stand for nothing other than misery for the sake of misery. You guys should take your own advice and:
1) Get sterilized.
2) Abandon civilization/technology and go live in the rain forest.
3) Leave the rest of us evil humans the hell alone.
Until you guys are willing to do these things you're nothing but hypocrites and thus don't have any credibility. If and when you actually start living your philosophy you'll stop being a problem for us and you'll get to live in your neo-Luddite utopia ahead of schedule. It's win-win for everyone so what are you waiting for?
Sorry, it doesn't count as a successful troll if you immediately post a juvenile and defensive reply, LOL, yuo dont even know how to TROLL right!
That's why when I need to purchase bulk quantities of Uranium, I always go to the Wal*Mart Supercenter. They work with the distributors to drive cost down. Made in USA is great and all, but when it comes to my nuclear supplies, I buy from Wal*Mart because you just can't beat prices on Indian- or Chinese-refined Uranium.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
But since one of the two major parties (the Labor Party) has a "3 Mines Policy", no mining company has been prepared to invest in finding and opening up uranium reserves.
In fact we have a quarter of the world's known reserves, and that's just what was found in the 60s and 70s. New exploration is beginning and our total is going up. If Labor overturn their 3 mines policy, expect to see a uranium boom (no pun intended) down under.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Inching away
Not me. I'm at a full bore sprint.
I don't read AC A human right
The US is sitting on thousands of tons of used Uranium fuel rods... notice I said "used" and not "spent". When the US finally accepts reprocessing as part of the fuel cycle, they'll have sufficient reserves for hundreds of years, not to mention that weapons grade plutonium from retired warheads can also be made in to a MOX fuel, and Lord knows you've got a zillion of those damn things.
Man I hate it when I get a fraction upside-down!
Make that "10 trillion joules" or thereabouts.
I plead lack of coffee.
Prices for uranium have been low for a while so many mines were shut down.i um.html
That's changing. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28uran
So the US has domestic sources for uranium, just they have been shut down
waiting for the prices to rise so money could be made.
Here's an idea that has been around for DECADES:
Build breeder reactors and recycle the useless spent nuclear fuel back into fresh nuclear fuel.
Oh wait..... That asshat Jimmy Carter BANNED them because his tree-hugging bedfellows asked him to. Looks like we have to bury it in the ground now.
I don't get it- The environmentalists asked him to ban the construction and use of breeder reactors because they wanted to be more environmentally freindly and didn't like the very tiny miniscule amount of byproduct, yet now we can't recycle ANY of our nuclear waste and have to bury ALL of it in the environment. So how are they being "environmentally freindly"? I sure wish they'd get there argument straight.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I said we have never run out of anything important and I stand by that statement. When one resource dries up we move to the next.
I've heard gloom and doom since I was a kid. The sky is not falling no matter how many times you say it will.
The problem with your example is rooted in public property and conservation. Public property is a problem because it's not in the interest of the indiviidual to conserve or replenish when he does not own it himself. Conservation is a problem because know-it-all, do-gooders always want someone else to pay for their great ideas.
That way we can reduce the demand for power and conserve the remaining uranium.
At the same time, we kick a few million tons of sand and dust into the atmosphere thus blotting out the sun and cooling the planet(originally suggested on Futurama)
I'm glad I don't come uranium. That sounds painful.
that only convinces me that Air and water and sun are the way of the future for future generations.
We dont have to dig anything or throw away waste of any kind while using those type of energies, we only need to build efficient machine to harness the power at hand.
We need to stop scavenging resource that are diminishing faster than it is created.
For reference, the density of uranium metal is 18 g/cm^3, so 1 lb of uranium metal would only be 25 cm^3 in size.
Let's double check here... 1 lb / 18g == 25.2
If you have 25 pieces that are each 1cm^3 in size, the total size is NOT 25cm^3. (25cm^3 is huge!).
Using your density value, 1lb of Uranium is only about CubeRoot(25)*1cm^3 == 3cm^3 == 0.18in^3... If it were a cube, it would only measure about 0.5" on each side.
I'm guessing 1 pound of Uranium could be made into a large bullet...
Japan may settle for buying resources, but the U.S. needs guaranteed access at prices that we can influence.
Julian L. Simon - "More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run.
Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt
inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to
themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run the new
developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices eventually
become lower than before the increased scarcity occurred."
You can hate humanity, freedom and capitalism if you want, but your theory that the world is going to end and we're all going to die is unfounded. The only way to make your predictions come true is to listen to your advice on how to avoid it. It's a self fulfilling prophesy and I want no part of it.
We are wealthier, healthier and freer than ever before in history and that's not going to change. Progress through liberty. Amazingly simple. (and not evil...)
It doesn't include moving to electric transportation exactly- it's just an extrapolation of our current electricity using trends. If we start using far more electricity than the model suggests (perhaps by using electric flying cars) then it would last a much smaller time, say 50 years. Then we would need to spend a couple of months each year digging up more uranium.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The submitter needs a lesson in reading comprehension.
Nowhere in the article does MIT suggest that the world is running out of uranium.
The article describes a supply shortage due to a long period of minimal investment in mining.
They go on to describe how the market has raised the price of uranium and if you have any interest in mining stocks you will know that uranium mining companies are curretly extremely popular because of this high price. Thus hundreds of millions of dollars have been flowing into uranium mining over the last few years. There is no suggestion that the world is running out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_City,_Saskatc hewan
If you have 25 pieces that are each 1cm^3 in size, the total size is NOT 25cm^3. (25cm^3 is huge!).
Yes the total 25 pieces 1cm^3 in size is 25cm^3, because that's what cm^3 means - number of 1 cm^3 pieces. Perhaps you were thinking of it as being (25 cm)^3? That would be huge, but that isn't what 25 cm^3 means. 25 cm^3 is the volume of an object that is 1cm x 1cm x 25cm. Not that big, but also much bigger than 0.18in^3.
The original density unit was given as g/cm^3. You were performing an unecessary cube root, and the result is you are off by a power of 3.
The enemies of Democracy are
Seems Norway has a pretty good stock of Thorium laying around (third largest according to WP, largest or second largest according to local researchers), and the politicians are finally getting over their "zomg nuculuear (sic)" phase. Could be a nice thing to replace the oil income when the world finally realizes oil dependency is silly.
For those with limited knowledge or attention spans, (or politicians)
We have 2 choices for every X number of years each Nuclear power plant runs:
(A) Store 10,000 pounds of Spent fuel for 25,000 years safely, taking into account rising sea levels, earthquakes, movement of the earths crust, etc.
(B) Store 15 pounds of Spent fuel for 300 years safely, protect/monitor/gaurd the "recycled" parts, because they could be used to make weapons.
Our government has chosen (A)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
...that's that for Duke Nukem Forever.
Nice knowin' ya!
And comparing dynamite to nukes is impossible. You can kill, like, maybe a dead whale with dynamite (or a few people). Nukes have the power to destroy the planet; you aren't going to make a weapon bigger and better than that for at least a hundred years or so. A better solution is to just educate people on the benefits of nuclear power. Also, remember that you can use nuclear energy to make H-fuel, which is easily transported and sold to countries you don't trust enough to sell nuclear reactors themselves.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
They just want to transmute the thorium into arcanite.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
When I saw the historical price graph of Uranium ( http://www.uranium.info/prices/monthly.html ), it struck me that as very similar to a historical price graph of gasoline/oil ( http://zfacts.com/p/35.html ).
[reaches for tinfoil hat]
CONSPIRACY!!!
are many, but generally all roads lead to fact the nuclear industry can't afford not to have a reactor running and hence engage in panic buying/hording. This has happened before. In addition, there was a bit of a free ride since the early 90s as USSR warheads were recycled for fuel and that supply is now winding down requiring more real mining. In addition, a large Canadian operation was damaged. As to ultimate world wide supply, one has to keep in mind the continued 'demise' of oil as well as the fact as price rises formerly uneconomic sources become viable. This all is somewhat old news, I wrote about the pricing issues briefly here and here (middle)
I mean, we have an excellent working fusion reactor that outputs all the energy we need and has a five billion year perfect record of safety and reliability.
Start Running Better Polls
Question I have,
If we're doing this much digging.
And 6mile deep geothermal has the potential to provide 10x the grid's demand for electricity.
Why do nuclear at all?
_
Certainly it's not because of the cost issue.
Since nuclear facilities have a nasty habit of costing far more than their initial claims.
On average 2-4x the amount.
Which is why nearly all the big "successful" nuclear nations have the governments own the nuclear plants. (Socialism?)
Since economically they aren't that viable.
Furthermore, currently nuclear is getting more federal subsidies per year than all renewables combined.
(And that's just from the DOE, if you include the DOD proliferation expenses, it gets quite a bit higher)
The real cost of nuclear obviously isn't the fuel.
However all the capital investments are done on a scale which involves near clairvoyant knowledge of the future
Discounting
Weak taxation (i.e. Any money put towards decommissioning a plant is not taxed for 60+ years)
High subsidy
Assumption of no significant externality costs (Like proliferation security)
_
The real issue is if nuclear were to become our main source of energy.
"Is it safe enough for Iran? And every other country like Iran?"
Since if we scale up our nukes,
We'll have no political leg to stand on to bark orders at another sovereign nation.
And considering nuclear winter can screw us over without even getting hit
Micromanaging thousands of facilities around the world
And building a robust anti-nuclear defense system for every nation
Doesn't sound like an inexpensive venture.
Certainly not cheaper than coal or renewables.
Uranium is people!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Is it because it will drive up uranium costs as more countries 'join the club'?
(tongue planted firmly in cheek)
Will we have a future debate about the US dependence on foreign uranium?
weapons development or terrorist dirty bomb or just the USA using it as an excuse any
nuclear power has led to war.
Integral Fast Reactor.
It can use any actinide, and has almost 90 times the efficiency of regular thermal reactors.
...the H2 car... We are talking about Hummer 2 right?Brazil has the largest Uranium deposit on the world. Unfortunately, it sits under the Amazon Forest.. so, how can you mine that ? with extremely expensive and specialized mining procedures, which we don't have. This is one of the reasons the world is so interested in the Amazon Forest. And as usual, our own governants will sell out our goods to the rest of the world so they can personally enrich. That's why I say Brazil should elect me as our President.. too bad I am not 35 years old yet... you have to be 35 to be a candidate for president here... if I were the president, I would close our borders for 5 years while we develope a massive mineral and industrial park so we can enrich that uranium and sell at all time high prices for the rest of the world. We should do this to all other minerals, such as bauxite, that is used to produce aluminum. Too bad Brazil is too dumb to elect me as their ruler... I would close the congress, and close the judiciary system and decide the life and death to the citizens. and the ministry of truth would make everyone happy. it would be a perfect world... poor children would be enlisted on the army at age 6, so they could have propper care and education, while enlarging our army (just like sparta). rich people would "donate" their money so the country can grow, but they would feel like they are really part of it, and not being ripped off. it would be a great nation... too bad it's only a dream... but 7 more years and then I will be able to run for president.. you will see... and don't worry, I don't want war with other countries.. but don't try to undermine our sovereignty. we will fight to the end !
Is a reality, thanks to Dr. Bussard, of Bussard ramjet fame.
The Pentagon quit funding it right after he exceeded break-even.
Deuterium you get from seawater.
Boron you get from the desert South West. Does anyone remember 20-Mule Train Borax?
This is a refinement of a late 1940s vacuum tube technology, and would solve the energy problem, the 'global warming problem', and the space propulsion problem.
Bussard was trying to develop these to power aircraft carriers and submarines, but MHD plasma torches can get us to Mars in three days on continuous thrust, using water as both reaction mass and radiation shielding. Water is amazingly easy to work with, and tankage of various geometries is easy to design.
I did some calculations a while back, reguarding him much energy it would take to reshape to moon into a cube. Assuming that atomic detonations could be used for the bulk of the work, followed by solar powered robot bulldozers, it could be done with about 20% of the uranium that is dissolved in earth seawater.
Why should anybody pay attention to us when we ask them to stop making nukes?
Because we have nukes? Not to mention the largest navy and air force, and one of the largest armies?
Besides, our position is 'anti-proliferation', not 'anti-existance'. Our position is that we don't want anybody who doesn't already have nukes to get or build them. Those that already have them get to keep them. Though we generally also don't want them to be increasing their stockpile.
Of course it's hypocritical. Most nations are.
I don't read AC A human right
Here's something helpful from the Canadian Nuclear FAQ by Dr. Jeremy Whitlock:
_ supply
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionG.htm#uranium
There is more uranium all over earth , more than enough to power the whole planet, well past the end of the suns life, ie billions of years.
After the 70s, barely any new mines went on, and the world just used existing stock piles from the cold war days.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...when they pry it out of my warm, glowing dead hands!
When I worked for Battelle, and while I was keeping abreast of microchemistry technology being developed worldwide, I had conceptualized a controlled flow reactor which operated using liquid fuel. The theoretical basis was to dissolve the fuel into a liquid matrix and then dilute it. The dilute solution would then be fed through an array of capillary tubes to a reaction chamber which was bombarded with neutrons or laser light. Such a design, if properly tuned, could ensure near 100% fission by controlling the concentration of the fuel and the rate of flow through the tubes. Heat from each individual reaction would be captured by, preferably, liquid nitrogen or liquid helium surrounding the array of capillary tubes. As the liquid nitrogen or helium (serving a dual purpose as a coolant and a heat transfer agent) warmed and evaporated the off gas would be used to spin magnetic turbines, preferably supercooled (by the same liquid) and suspended between magnets to minimize frictional loss of energy.
Many colleagues agreed that the idea was a grand way to maximize nuclear fuel usage and minimize nuclear waste while keeping the entire process in a closed system which wouldn't rely on solid fuel rods or much human interaction. Runaway reactions would be easy to control (by stopping the flow of fuel into the capillaries) and no energy would be wasted. Modern day nuclear reactors lose unending amounts of energy to cooling towers--the water is too hot to dispose of regularly but not hot enough to generate the steam necessary to drive the turbines in those plants. All of the energy in the water between "steam" and "cool" (normal lake/stream water is, what, around 65 deg F?) is just outright wasted.
Come to think of it, why don't they just recycle the hot water so that it doesn't take as much of the fission reaction energy to turn it back into steam? Huh...
My idea for a capillary tube liquid fuel reactor was immediately shot down by a nuclear engineer whose rationale for dismissing it relied not a single bit on science--the fact was that, due to international nuclear regulations and regulations imposed by the US, it simply would not be legal to keep the fuel in a liquid state and nearly impossible to prove to inspectors that the fuel had indeed been spent.
So much for bright ideas. Foiled by people (politicians) who don't know what they're talking about--again.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I fail to see why the majority of people insist on ignoring the superior technology of the AECL's CANDU reactor. It uses unenriched fuel, does not produce bomb grade waste and cannot meltdown.
s p?x=493s p?x=497&oid=1188#Fact_Sheet
Maybe because it's not American its not valid or allowed? Sort of like the Avro Arrow?
There is no shortage of uranium for CANDU reactors.
http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/es/erb/erb/english/View.a
http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/es/erb/erb/english/View.a
TFA is a load of BS.
as sooner or later someone in basic physics will figure out that electric fields can be negated and fusion pulled off without massive systems and we'll just use the nuclear fission stuff for long term batteries sort of like a car battery, car engine, and gas tank. Turn the key five hundred years later and the reactor kicks right up with a couple hundred gigawatts.
Good luck with the warranty on the transmission though.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Yes, but consider enriched uranium costs ~1500$ while raw uranium costs 90$ So making raw uranium cost 400x will just effectively double their costs, and I doubt it'll rise so much.
Umm... dead wrong.
First, the enrichment process starts with one pile of natural uranuium (NU), at about 0.7% U235, a trace of U234, and the remaining 99+% U238. At the end of the enrichment process, you have two piles; one is at 3-5% enrichment (for commercial LEU reactor fuel; more for research reactors or bombs), the other about 0.1 to 0.3% U235 (depleted uranium, or DU). To get the extra U235 in the EU, you need between five and eleven weights of NU, depending on desired output grade and DU depletion capabilities.
The output DU is worth only marginally more than an equivalent mass of lead, useful but neglectable here. Thus, of the $1500 (assuming that price is correct), between $350 and 1000 of it (probably about $600) are the cost of the input Uranium. The rest is the cost of energy (plus some enrichment equipment amortization) for the separation process (call it $900). So, to double the output price of $1500 you probably only need to increase by about a factor of 3.5 or so.
Disclaimer: the input numbers sound about right, but it's been over a decade since I was studying nuclear engineering.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The upper limit price for about the next hundred years, even with exponential growth, is near $4000/kilo, or an increase of around 4000%; at that point, extraction from seawater becomes economically practical. Back at that last big price spike (see previously linked graph) in the late 1970's the Japanese set up a pilot plant, which ended up showing about that level of cost. They had hoped it would work better than it did, and it was good research, but immediately most un-useful given the way prices fell back by the time (1986) they had it producing.
And, speaking of things others will probably mention, plutonium extraction from ANY kind of used fuel is a prerequisite for breeders, BTW, and we've already been holding back on that due to proliferation worries.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The last 50 years of "just 20 more years" have been empty promises not based on any real analysis of the progress and remaining challenges. With the JET and other Tokamak projects, however, we do have measurable progress and a decent understanding of the challenges. Your linked article also never gives any reasons for saying it will stay 50 years other than that's what the skeptics say.
The ITER project will come online in about 10 years. At this point in time, I am unaware of any serious doubts that they will achieve useable Q (energy out over energy in) values. Their timeline gives about 20 years for proving out the design and testing related to commercial development, with the follow-up DEMO project coming online during the second half of this phase. It is possible to modify the ITER mid-program to produce electricity (but probably not worthwhile yet), and DEMO would actually run continuously and generate useable electricity. Meanwhile, the IFMIF facility would provide the necessary data on irradiated material properties for the engineering of commercial cores to take place. DEMO would prove out these designs.
Given adequate funding (about a $billion a year, or roughly what a major city spends annually on electricity, divided among 7 member nations), there is little reason to suspect that the ITER timeline showing the first commercial reactors coming online in the 2045-2050 timeline is not achievable.
In fact, economics is a huge driver of the current schedule. There is a big gap between the startup of DEMO and the first commercial plants coming online, because part of what DEMO will achieve is clear out any remaining bugs and prove out the long-term effectiveness of the materials chosen by IFMIF. The ITER team has proposed that the DEMO design could likely be immediately implemented as a commerical power plant, although not yet optimized with lessons from the DEMO project, and therefore with higher operational costs. This alone would cut 10-15 years off the projections.
Not to mention, currently the funding for ITER (not counting DEMO or IFMIF) stands at about $11 billion spread out over 30 years of construction and operation. Certainly if we really wanted to we could compress that schedule by spending more upfront to get it built in less than a decade and compress the research schedule by providing the resources to quickly transition from phase to phase of the program.
It's no wonder we're running out, when most of the reactors in service around the world are grossly inefficient anyhow, and were practically designed to generate nuclear waste products they can't use for fuel. The typical light-water nuclear reactor today only exploits about 1% or less of the energy it can get out a given amount of nuclear fuel. (Assuming it has a once-through fuel cycle, which is the most popular.) Other technologies, however (such as the Integral Fast Reactor, which Hazel O'Leary and John Kerry so kindly helped to kill in 1994) which feature closed fuel cycles could theoretically safely use up to 95% of the energy stored in their fuel, and could in practice even consume the fuel-waste of other reactors. Other alternative fuel cycles feature materials such as Thorium as their fuel of choice. (Even Americium - the stuff in your smoke detector - has been considered as a fuel source.)
This 'Uranium Crisis' isn't caused by the mere consumption of nuclear fuel, but rather the ridiculously wasteful manner by which we've chosen to consume it for over half a century now. Better technology is within our reach that could allow us to dramatically stretch our nuclear fuel supply, both at current and greatly heightened consumption levels. While this hardly means we should stop worrying (good ideas too often fall before bad people) it does offer a bit of hope for us until nuclear fusion power finally takes off some time toward the end of our lives, if it ever does.
I'm pretty sure there is plenty of carbon released in the digging up, processing and transportation of uranium, and also in the long-term storage of spent uranium.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion
but for long-term security there's no better consumable.
Beer is my preferred consumable for long-term security. Everclear for backpacking trips.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
MAD has worked against the soviet union, but we face a number of other threats. North Korea as an example, China more long term.
I believe that maintaining the option is for the best, though we don't need thousands of warheads.
It's very high level at this point, but any country we deal with knows, at some level, that if we reach a certain point we can destroy them for virtually no cost for ourselves. Sure, a nuke is expensive, but it's dwarfed by the cost of an invasion/occupation force.
I don't read AC A human right
Bismuth is hard to handle and scarce, and, from my own experiments with bismuth alloys years ago, it has horrible flow and wetting properties.
It's amazing what IS handled quite safely in industry - molten glass in multi-tonne quantities, flammable gases, toxic liquids. The trick is to find a technology that works, refine it, and stick to it. Before long people forget there was ever a problem. In my kitchen cupboard I have nearly pure formic acid, sodium hydroxide, chlorine based bleach. And that's just household cleaners.
Pining for the fjords
"As for seawater extraction - where did that paticular gem come from and did the guy have more than an MBA?"
Google for uranium and seawater, grasshoppa...
Scathing dismissal based on poorly founded intuition? To make that work you have to *actually* be the smartest person in the room. And *damn* quick on your feet.
Avoid ad-hominem attacks, they detract more from your credibility than from your target's. At least, they should, unless you're addressing people with no training in analyzing and resisting rhetorical tricks. Hmm. That's just about everybody, anymore. Carry on.
--
phunctor
First of all, there is no shortage of uranium suitable for nuclear fuel. Secondly, no reactor comes on stream without securing a supply of uranium for the life of the reactor; all sales are long-term contracts.
The spot price for uranium varies a bit, but the mines themselves sell at roughly $10 a pound, and they are selling it at that price as we speak, because they signed the supply contracts 10 and 20 years ago.
So, whatever and wherever the world's reactors are, they have enough fuel to run to decommission. Let's get that right out of the way now.
There was a flood at the mine sitting on top of the world's richest uranium deposit. This single mine has easy access to what amounts to 20% of current production. When it comes back on stream in 2010, all of a sudden uranium will be oh-so-plentiful again.
There is a short-term shortage for reactors that are coming on stream right now. Some of the players in the uranium generating industry are stockpiling their uranium fuel, in order to create an artificial shortage and drive up the spot price, and then are selling it at these amazing spot prices.
You know, greed, speculation, regular human behavior stuff, and whatever a human might do to exploit a profit opportunity a corporation damn well can be counted on to do. According to security laws, it's more-or-less illegal not to; shareholder can sue you for not being greedy when the opportunity presents itself. Go figure.
There is huge, and I mean huge, exploration activity for uranium right now, because companies can point to the $100+ spot price and get money from the usual risky stock markets. Spend it while you can get it but in the long run these shareholders probably will be looking at penny stocks once the dust settles.
There are a couple of new mines coming on stream in the next few years; they all have outrageous reserves.
Once Cameco's Cigar Lake mine fixes it's flooding problem, there will be way too much uranium around. The uranium producers would like to sign some long-term contracts for a number between the $10 it's been since forever and the $100 it is now, but they know damn well it won't be $100, and so do the people who own the reactors. Both are sitting it out, waiting for the dust to settle, to see exactly what yellocake is going to cost them in 2011.
And it will settle, make no mistake. If you are in a speculating mood, you now know enough to get started fleecing those who believe the lies. Be sure to get out in time.