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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.
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
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
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.
Exactly. Naturally occurring uranium is at most 0.7% U-235, which is the fissile material used in conventional power reactors. The other 99% is discarded as "depleted" uranium and used as high density slugs in weapons. So if the world could only get over its Puritanical aversion to breeder technology, the available supply of fissile material would instantly increase by a factor of 99, not even counting the thorium that can be transmuted into U-233 (as already noted by another poster).
Less is more.
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
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)
I don't like nuclear power either (it's unsafe, unsustainable and expensive), but in today's world, it's not like we have lot of choices...
Really? Cuz I think anybody that knows about the subject could dispute all three of those statements. It's unsafe? Want to talk about how many people die in coal mining accidents? Hell, that still happens in the Western world. Thousands die in the developing world. Want to talk about global climate change caused by CO2? Nuclear accidents get more press because of the fear of anything "nuclear" but if you look at the complete life cycle of fossil fuels they aren't any better. In fact they are probably much worse.
Define unsustainable? Because the general opinion seems to be that using breeder technology we will have fuel sources for tens of thousands of years.
Expensive? Compared to what? Coal? Gas? How much will climate change wind up costing us?
reduce our consumption drastically
Why should I have to reduce my standard of living when we have technology (nuclear) that won't cause climate change? Everybody talks about reducing consumption but that isn't going to fly. You realize that two or three billion Chinese and Indians are doing their best to get up to a Western standard of living? If humanity doesn't embrace nuclear, what other option is there? More CO2? What kind of world do you want your children to grow up in?
and removing nuclear power from our energy panel is as stupid as arguing about nuclear wastes in a 1000 years when everything that we do today (like planning 26 new coal powerplants in Germany to replace nuclear powerplants!) lead us into *big* troubles in no more than 50 years...
Thank you!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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?
Since breeder reactors turn "spent" fuel into more usable fuel, they actually produce very little waste, and that waste has a very short half life. Breeder reactors are, in fact, both the answer to the fuel problem and the waste problem.If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Uranium is not dangerous, and one pound of uranium is not very much as far as power reactors are concerned. 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.
A typical PWR generates around 3000 MWt, runs for ~500 full power days, and is loaded with around 70,000 kg of uranium metal. So that is [3000 MW*500 d*24 hr/d*3600 s/hr]/[70 000 kg] = 1,851,429 MJ/kg. For comparison, gasoline contains 47 MJ/kg. Keep in mind though that the uranium metal is not really consumed, it is only depleted until it builds up too much neutron-absorbing fission products, at which point it can be reprocessed and reused.
If uranium metal is $80 per lb, then it costs a mere 2 cents for 1 GJ of thermal power. Gasoline costs about $3/gallon and one gallon weighs about 6.2 lbs=$0.48/lb. So gas is about $22.51 for 1 GJ, which is more then 1000 times more expensive then uranium.