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CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage
eldavojohn writes "Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"
What about plutonium and other radioactive materials? (first post? hehehe)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Everytime nuclear fission comes up as a possible viable alternative. Peak Uranium is as real as peak oil, and it's here now.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Why not build Thorium-based reactors instead? The material is 100x more abundant. The USA has an ample natural supply. You get 10 times the energy because you don't have the 238 problem. There is almost no waste and the byproducts decay within a human lifetime. And you can't use them to make nuclear weapons.
Actually, most of the things you buy on a routine basis are commodities, so obviously a lot of people believe in investing in them.
Also, I hate to burst your bubble, but fusion won't be "free".
Even after we learn how to build one that works, we'll still have the moderately colossal expense of building fusion plants.
And disposing of moderately radioactive fusion reactors at end-of-life. Mustn't forget that part.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Uranium is for infidels and suckers. Iranium is the future of nuclear development!
Doc Smith thought of this in the Skylark Series. The hero discovers total liberation of mass-energy from matter, and assumes the rational thing is to sell the energy at prices so low it's practically free -- he'll still get filthy rich. The bad guys realize that if they get a *monopoly* on the process, they can sell the energy at just enough below current market prices to drive competition out of business.
If ultra-cheap fusion becomes technically feasible, the race will be to get working plants on line so you can knock out the competition. Profits, unless regulated by law, will inevitably ensue.
In any case, there is no such thing as unlimited energy. If energy were 1000x lower in price than it is today, we'd still be facing some form of an energy crisis, because we'd adjust our economy to use energy on vastly larger scales. The place to be in that scenario is distribution. The people who own the power distribution lines will do very well indeed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Helium-3 is used for absolute-zero experiments and nuclear material detectors, both which have been increasing rapidly. Its is mainly produced as a byproduct of nuclear weapons product, which has been on the downswing. The net result are shortages and massive price increases.
Areva quotes their fuel costs as roughly 17% of total cost of nuclear power with half of that being the cost of the uranium ( rest being enrichment and fuel-rod fabrication )
This means that even if uranium costs were to double the cost of nuclear power would increase by less than 9%.
Conversely for the price of nuclear power do double from uranium costs alone the cost of uranium would have to increase 10 times. Long before that happens it would become economical to build fast breeder reactors and they only need a fraction of the fuel other reactors do.
Also at such high uranium prices it would start being economical to extract uranium from sea-water, effectively making uranium availability a non-issue for thousands of years.
Look how that panned out.
A lot of natural resources go into Solar panels. Resources that need to be mined.
Exactly. I'd like to think we weren't so naive anymore. There is a cost to everything, and a downside to every type of energy generation.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I swear this is the same issue the guys in Battlestar Galactica seem to never grasp. "AWW FRAK, we're out of water/food/fuel again and now we need to risk our lives to get more RIGHT NOW!!!"
For those who didn't read (the rather dense) TFA, a big part of his objection is that we don't have a good, safe technology for breeder reactors, and that our existing reactor designs require Uranium which is something of a limited resource. I've seen estimates that we have maybe 70 years of the stuff around if we went totally nuclear, but those could be high or low -- who knows (and the cost will be astronomical when we start to run short of it). Breeder reactors can extend the fuel lifetime for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the existing breeder reactors that we do have tend to be very unsafe and expensive, using things like liquid sodium (catches fire when it contacts air) for coolant.
This brings me to my main point: the current state of nuclear reactor technology is not sustainable. Most Slashdot nuclear advocacy goes like this: (a) start building reactors now, (b) don't worry about fuel supplies, we'll just build breeder reactors. The problem is that the reactors we build in step (a) may be entirely incompatible with the breeder reactors, and we may not be able to build enough of the breeders in (b) safely to move to this technology in the near term.
Both of these problems can probably be solved with technological developments, which means spending a lot of money on nuclear research. It does not necessarily mean "go out and build reactors", "give subsidies to the nuclear industry", which seems to be the preferred policy action of many nuclear advocates. I think this needs to be understood.
Nuclear's a dying industry, and not for the reason commonly cited.
Fact is, it is ALREADY much more expensive to build new nuclear reactor capacity than it is to put up new windmills (which are in turn much more expensive than natural gas or coal)
I suspect that even when you factor in the cost of storage, as long as you use something like a compressed air cavern for storage, then wind is still cheaper.
I predict that less than 10 new nuclear fission plants for commercial power generation will ever be built in the United States over the rest of human history.
The moon is the answer for all our future resource-problems..
Why stop at the moon? I'm sure we could pull all of our resource needs out of Uranus.
According to your source:
In late 2006, Denison Mines reopened the Pandora mine in the La Sal mining district of southeastern Utah.[8] Denison Mines has received all the required permits from the state of Utah and the US Bureau of Land Management to reopen its Tony M uranium mine in the Henry Mountains; ore production is expected to begin in 2008. The Tony M deposit is said to contain 5.3 million pounds (2400 tonnes) of U3O8.[1] Nearby the Tony M deposit, Denison has another uranium deposit, the Bullfrog. Denison is currently stockpiling ore at its White Mesa uranium processing mill in the Henry Mountains; the mill is expected to begin processing in early 2008.[9]
Your argument isn't so solid.
Something that doesn't seem to come through clearly in the above analysis IMO...
If a light water reactor is economical with $40/lb uranium contributing 0.2 cents / kWh, then a light water reactor could also be used with $400/lb uranium (from seawater) increasing the cost per kWh by 1.8 cents. Now, as cheap as that may sound, it could mean nearly 20%-40% increase in electricity costs if we assume all fuels are currently on par cost-wise; I don't see how to extract that with certainty from the provided numbers.
So not as good as the numbers with a breeder, but not nearly as bad as some scenarios we talk about with conventional fuels running scarce. It seems that if we seriously put light-water reactor deployment in gear, we'd be limiting the worst-case scenario to a 40% increase in energy costs.
That's without the political and practical security problems of a breeer. However, it is not without costs. Light water reactors do leave behind a lot of radioactive waste since they have a loose definition of "spent" fuel.
The moon is the answer for all our future resource-problems..
You were probably going for a +5 Funny, but in case you weren't, there are various issues with that solution. First being that even if the moon were made of uranium (or oil), it would probably be too expensive to ship it in and out of our respective gravity wells to earth. Second, the moon seems to be pretty much mostly a large non-metallic mantel with a small non-active metallic core. Chances are that the moon simply isn't nearly mineral rich as the earth. Three, the moon is a really harsh environment, especially for the machinery that we would need to mine anything. Without weathering, every little bit of dust is a sharp jagged piece of sand paper that will wear down equipment fairly fast.
All in all, the moon probably isn't a good source of materials, even water. For energy, we'd be better harvesting solar energy in orbit and beaming it back to earth. For materials, especially metallic elements such as uranium, we'd be better off mining asteroids.
Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his postulated 5 billion years.
I can't believe someone would counter a plan to provide energy for 5 billion years with "Nuh-uh! It's only good for 2.5 billion!"
There are numerous ways to make PV cells, including the much cheaper dye based, and they keep coming up with new ones all the time, and we just won't run out* of materials to make solar thermal collectors, which among other uses (direct hot water use, direct hot air use, direct pure fresh water production, cooking, food drying and storage, etc) can be used in concentrator arrays to drive steam plants, or anything else you might need a source of "wicked freekin hot" for.
*if we did run out of normal materials, that means we have run out of most everything then, you won't be building nuthin', so the point would be moot.
You can make solar thermal from such a wide variety of stuff it ain't funny. Example, here's a simple do it in one weekend project, just from junk our landfills are full of or you can go scrounge someplace, an old refrigerator, a sheet of glass (like some used store glass), an old hot water tank and some plumbing fixtures will make you a hot water heater.
I like solar the most out of all the energy choices we have now (generally speaking) because it scales so well, and can be configured to do so many things, from DIY made out of scraps like I outlined above, all the way to large scale commercial uses. It is our only practical fusion power, and will probably *be* our only practical fusion power for a LONG time.(and biofuels are solar fusion power as well so I include them) It is also the one that lends itself best to decentralization of energy production and allows the energy consumer to actually have a power source paid off, and not be stuck renting the infrastructure and then paying for the fuel and their never ending need for profit from bigelectrico or bigliquidfuelsco forever and ever and ever.
The other reason I like it so well..and this is really important...no stupid hideous wars will be fought over solar tech. Which is something I just *wish* the all pro nuke and pro oil crowd would acknowledge is a really major "cost" of their pet methods today.
Uranium tech and petroleum tech..wars in the past, wars today and threats of even larger and nastier wars in the future over access to supplies and who gets someone else's "permission" to use this tech or access supplies/raw materials.
The sooner we get away from those two war creating sources (and coal) the better, IMO, for the safety and security of the human species (and all the other species).
Build the FBR on the moon.
I think we all know how that ends.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
A high-energy, high-accuracy energy beam transmitted from some installation on the moon? What could possibly go wrong...
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Iran didn't try to build a breeder reactor. Iran has a small research reactor and a conventional Russian designed LWR. We also just found out about an enrichment facility.
The US does have nukes in a handful of NATO countries - there are a couple of reasons for this. First, the whole reason NATO exists is so Russia doesn't decide to invade Europe, having nukes in Italy reinforces this position. Secondly, it reduces the number of nuclear states - on one hand if the nukes are under the state's control it's a tad disingenuous to call them a non-nuclear state, but on the other, it reduces or eliminates the motivation for that state to develop the knowledge necessary to build it's own devices. Furthermore, I imagine we know where all "our" nukes are, and were war to break out with Italy, they wouldn't retain nuclear capability for long.
No one's threatening to invade the US because we spend about as much money on defense as the rest of the world combined. Not that that gives us the moral high ground, but it puts us squarely on the practical don't-fuck-with-us ground. We're also not seriously contemplating building breeder reactors or even nuclear fuel repossessing because of a combination of domestic social pressures, to avoid sending the "wrong" signals to foreign governments, proliferation concerns.
Hey. I've got a brilliant Idea. Let's construct a thermonuclear fusion reactor at the center of the solar system. We will collect the radiation energy with photovoltaic cells pointed to the sky. As there are no moving parts, it wouldn't require much maintainence either. Why hasn't anybody implemented such a brilliant idea?
I first read through this article when it was first posted on the oil drum weeks ago, and at the time it just seemed ... wrong, somehow. I've since spent a lot of time doing my own research and reading on the topics, and I feel Dr. Dittmar has been intellectually dishonest in at least a few areas. Further, the organization of the article is terrible, mixing sections and topics in a confusing fashion. I suspect this is intentional.
Prime examples of issues in the article:
- He uses nonstandard terminology with respect to breeding gain, and in several places uses phrases such as 'has only a maximum theoretical breeding gain of 0.7' in a context that implies that anything below 1.0 is not self-sustaining. Once armed with a better understanding of the terminology I was able to put his comments into proper context, but this just made the negative spin obvious instead of allowing it to slip under the radar.
- He makes the claim that no thorium breeder has ever reached breakeven, when in fact the very first one assembled had a net gain after operation.
- He makes the claim that no currently online breeder reactors are at breakeven, combined with claims that breeder reactors are a huge proliferation concern, neglecting the fact that most currently operational breeders were designed explicitly to have slightly less than breakeven gain precisely to address proliferation concerns.
In short, while he may be competent and he may be very experienced, there is a clear agenda behind this. The paper contains a substantial amount of spin and FUD, and further is organized in such a fashion as to make it difficult to analyze. I would firmly lump it into the 'armchair FUD' category instead of 'unbiased scientific position paper'. YMMV.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
The first human inter-stellar starship is not that bad of an additional unintended side effect...
That's the average right now. There is no way that humanity will be able to maintain that average over the next 200 - 300 years.
If we attempt it, that will likely solve the growth problem right there (war, famine, disease, general Malthusian badness).
Do that calculation again, and instead of assuming zero growth. Do it assuming 3% growth, because that's the average.
No energy source whatsoever in the physical universe can accommodate perpetual 3% growth. Therefore the demand to accommodate 3% perpetual growth is unreasonable.
In Sweden, there is said to be a whole mountain of uranium; enough to supply all the world's reactors for 100 years. World wide there are numerous other low-grade sources.
The trouble is, that these are low grade ores and it costs more to extract the uranium.
The point is there is a continuous curve (sorry I don't have that curve to show you)of the size of uranium supply versus the cost of extracting it. Therefore, it is not a matter of uranium shortage it is a question of energy costs.
Since nuclear power is so saddled with the sky high cost of meeting safety and environmental requirements, I'm not sure how much uranium contributes to the total cost. If uranium is only 10% of the cost of a Mwh, then doubling the cost of uranium adds only 10% to the cost. Perhaps another slashdotter can post the actual cost breakdowns for today's nukes.
Virginia land hides huge uranium deposit
First URL is UPI story. Second is abstract of a scholarly paper from Virginia Tech.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/01/02/Virginia-land-hides-huge-uranium-deposit/UPI-69751199296526/
http://www.geoinformatics.vt.edu/server/docs/jjerden/NA99l.htm
Estimated content 55,000 tons uranium per UPI. The second suggests ~40,000 tonnes of uranium, ~40 million tonnes of 0.1% ore. If the 0.1% ore is itself the usual 0.7% U235, then ~10,000 tonnes of 3% enriched would net from the ore body.
Producing antimatter with current technology costs much more energy than you can get out, and even with perfect technology, it would cost exactly the same energy as you get back when using it, so it could at best be used as energy storage, but not as energy source.
Not that we could produce any significant amount of antimatter with current technology anyway.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
and Nevadans/Greeks are not fond of that idea.
So what you are saying is that they aren't being team players?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Solar energy is very low density. It's used in spacecraft (out til about Mars) because except for RTGs it's a lot cheaper than launching fuel into orbit. For terrestrial applications however, sunlight only has an energy density of 1500 Watts/m^2 in space, dropping to about 800 W/m^2 on earth. Factor in the 15% efficiency of mass-produced commercial PV (photovoltaics) and you're only talking about 120 W/m^2 peak production. Next factor in the movement of the sun (since you specified no moving parts) and weather, and realistically you're looking at maybe 50-70 W/m^2 on average during the day (halve this if you want average output over 24 hours). This is semi-reasonable for static applications (e.g. houses) where you can plaster a large area with PV panels. A house's average 36 kW-h daily energy use could be satisfied with about 40-60 m^2 of panels. (You'd still want to be on the grid though, so you could do things like heat the house when fresh snowfall covered up your panels.)
But it's useless for mobile and space-constrained applications. A typical sedan requires about 20-25 hp to maintain cruise speed on the highway. That's about 15-19 kW. If you go with the lower figure, if you covered the entire upward-facing surface of your car with PV (about 6-7 m^2), parking it on a sunny 8-hour workday would capture about 5 kW-h of energy in the battery. Or enough to drive your solar car at highway speeds for all of 15-20 minutes (never mind accelerating).
Another idea a solar advocate pitched to me was powering street lamps entirely with PV mounted on top of the lamp post. The typical street lamp uses a 250 W bulb. If you assume the light needs to be on for 14 hours in winter, it'll use 3.5 kW-h of energy. A static panel which could capture that amount of energy in 10 hours of daylight at 70 W/m^2 would need to be 5 m^2. There's no way you're mounting that on top of a lamp post. LED lighting would have to improve to the point where a 25 Watt LED bulb could provide the same light to make the idea semi-reasonable. And you'd still be talking about a half m^2 panel which although not overly large would still be highly visible and unwieldy should the wind pick up.
Ya, read about that, sort of a giant pie in the sky boondoggle. The people there, Africa in general, should get the power anyway.
That and other reasons are why I am way more in favor of individuals (and small co-ops) doing it themselves and owning the means of production and routing around obscene middle man costs and the vagaries of geopolitical reality that can impact your delivery. Europe has already gone through that with Russian natgas, and man boy howdy do I remember the OPEC embargo and the tanker war shortages. Then just last year we had the fast rise of gasoline and diesel from those dogpuke investment banker wallstreet speculators, who nailed both food commodities and energy *at the same time*.
If you make your own power onsite..electricity and transportation fuel, whether that is electricity as well or some liquid biofuels (or maybe hydrogen in the future from water) you won't be boycotting yourself or charging yourself an extra fat skim.
DE-centralization and the open-sourcing of energy producing tech should be the next great step for people. The collective "we", all the people on the planet, been held in perpetual economic bondage and gross physical peril by centralized and politicized energy supply and delivery. The cost in money is too great, the cost in lives and misery and health is much much worse. the cost of future conflicts going really bad becvause of nuke tech is..insane, just crazy.
There are no "solar proliferation" issues really, not like nukes, and as we see, there is no safe way to have nuke power without having weapons potential, so it will always be contentious. And we already know people fight over oil, heck, japan attacked the US in ww2 over access to oil, we finally ended the war with nukes. Just that should have been enough to tell humanity we had really screwed up and we should have been looking for alternatives right back then, not still floundering around like we are today "thinking" about it.
If we run superinsulation at our home and business energy needs one way, then run onsite made power at it from the other direction..eventually those two things cross, poof, energy independence, a *sweet thing indeed*.
And the really cool part is, it IS possible today, with no new tech having to be invented or produced, so those who want to..can already. Yes, it is still "early adopter" phase, but it got good enough awhile back, it is doable today.
How long will billions of years of uranium last? 250 years? 300? (I haven't run the numbers, but what I can tell you is that the emeritus professor from Stanford is wrong (or irrelevant) because his starting assumptions are wrong)
If you run the numbers then 1 billion years' supply under present consumption rates lasts for 635 years under 3% growth. But, your numbers are just as wrong and irrelevant as those of the calculation that you are accusing, since there is absolutely no reason why historical growth trends must continue to be the case indefinitely into the future.
For comparison, the entire mass-energy resources of the observable universe will be depleted in 5000 years under the (plainly untenable) assumption of perpetual 3% growth.
The more fun argument is that if the growth is unavoidable, there isn't any reason to worry about how we will sustain it, so it doesn't matter how long the uranium will last.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.