CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage 581
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.'"
Alternative materials? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd have to re-enrich, which is the whole problem. We're not geared to do that on a large scale right now, and we won't be for a while.
Hopefully this will kick some asses into actually looking into re-enrichment. Most of the waste problems we have are due to our refusal to use the existing methods.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He talks about that. According to TFA, no one has come up with a practical, economic (at current price levels) re enrichment (breeder reactor) system. So, it's theoretically possible (along with a host of other things), but technically very difficult and likely not a good strategy to pin one's hopes on.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I know it's do-able, and I've actually been agitating in that direction for a long time. Re-enriching nuclear waste makes more sense (to me) than dumping tons of usable, highly radioactive, quarter-spent fuel in landfills that no one wants within a million miles of their house.
But the problem is mainly that re-enrichment is frowned upon because it creates tons of weapons-grade plutonium, so the only plants we have are clunky, inefficient, research plants. We'd have to redesign them for commercial use.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Informative)
We're not running out of uranium. We are running out of *enriched* uranium. Fast breeder reactors (FBRs) solve the problem because they (a) run on plutonium and (b) transmute depleted uranium and other "waste" products from legacy reactors into useful fuel.
FBRs can can reprocess or dispose of weapons material and spent fuel from legacy nuke plants. Once bootstrapped with plutonium, they'll happily run on crap that your typical nuke plant considers useless waste. They're also more efficient. Would you rather have 100 tons of waste annually from a thermal reactor plant, or 2 tons from a breeder reactor? It's radiocative either way.
Expecting anyone to bring a commercial FBR online before 2013 is ludicrous. You'd be hard pressed to complete even a boring coal fired plant in that short of a timeframe. FBRs are also "scary" and utterly taboo for anyone besides trusted friends to own or operate, because the fuel that they produce happens to be plutonium that's great for making bombs. So, ummm, as with any nuke plant, you maintain a certain level of security. It ought to be common sense.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Fast_reactors [wikipedia.org]
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Funny)
Without good security you'll get Libyans stealing your plutonium, and then some crazy scientist gets a hold of it and puts it in a DeLorean....
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem, as I understand it from TFA, is that the existing designs for FBRs are enormously expensive and dangerous --- not just because of the plutonium stockpile, but because they're cooled with liquid sodium. Most of the safety advances in modern reactors haven't been replicated to the FBR technology yet. We're not even sure how to do it.
As for the "securing plutonium is easy" argument, well --- geez, any engineer will tell you that making things work is the easy part. Making them work in the face of malicious actors, now, that's the hard problem.
Effectively securing that plutonium may be possible in the more developed nations (though there are risks). However, any solution that significantly reduces CO2 emissions is going to require global deployment. That means not just first-world countries, but "second" and third-world ones. Countries with political instability, criminal gangs, and in some cases nasty dictators. TFA is pointing out that every FBR will have enough plutonium lying around to build at least one fission device, possibly more. As the number of reactors hits the thousands, the probability that some will be stolen/misappropriated rapidly approaches one. This means wide-scale nuclear proliferation, the very real threat of cities being nuked, etc. And it's a problem that can't be put back in the bag even if we do eventually develop a safer technology. That will make civilization enormously more painful and expensive as we go forward.
The author appears to be advocating Thorium reactors as a solution. No idea if this is the right idea, but he seems to know more than myself or the parent poster, so I won't dismiss him with a handwave.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Insightful)
From a quick reading he does hand wave quite a bit.
Anything that's not a full scale commercial enterprise doesn't exist and never will.... research is pointless.
For the uranium from seawater thing he talks about the cost of the experiment rather than any kind of estimated costs of large scale extraction.
It seems to boil down to "we're not getting much uranium out of the ground right now while prices are low and we have massive stockpiles keeping prices low.... hence somehow people won't start mining more as the price of uranium goes up again....."
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Informative)
Here [wikipedia.org]:
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:4, Funny)
Again 42 is the answer to everything.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:4, Insightful)
``Would you rather have 100 tons of waste annually from a thermal reactor plant, or 2 tons from a breeder reactor? It's radiocative either way.''
Well, there's radioactive, radioactive, and radioactive, so saying "it's radioactive either way" is not very informative. How dangerous is it and how long will it stay that way?
I am sure that virtually everything I will come into contact with during my entire live will be radioactive, but it will probably emit so little radiation that I don't bother even thinking about it. Similarly, a small amount of highly radioactive matter doesn't bother me a lot, either; it will decay in a flash and then life will be back to normal.
What I am bothered by, though, is the idea of creating large amounts of material that will be dangerous long after we are gone. Past generations haven't made my life miserable by making my world a nuclear/toxic/what-have-you waste dump, and I'd like to not do so to the generations that come after me, either.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reactors produce radioactive waste which would be a significant hazard leaked into the environment. Neither product is inherently safer, and has to be handled and stored with utmost care.
The advantage of fast-breeders is that they produce only a tiny fraction of waste that other designs do. In other words, we could switch to breeder reactors and produce significantly less waste than we do today. In fact, by reprocessing fuel we could completely alleviate expansion of future waste, and we would still only ha
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:4, Informative)
Fast breeder reactors (FBRs) solve the problem because they ... (b) transmute depleted uranium and other "waste" products from legacy reactors into useful fuel.
FBRs can can reprocess or dispose of weapons material and spent fuel from legacy nuke plants. Once bootstrapped with plutonium, they'll happily run on crap that your typical nuke plant considers useless waste.
Um, no. Breeder reactors can produce fuel for other reactors by irradiating natural uranium with neutrons, which produces primarily plutonium-239 with several other minor byproducts. They cannot by themselves reprocess spent fuel ("waste") into usable fuel, although they can play a (minor) part of this process.
There are several steps that spent fuel must pass before it can be used as fresh fuel in a common LWR again. To begin with, the spent fuel contains a lot of nuclear poisons that prevent the reactor from retaining the nuclear chain reaction, so these must first be removed from the spent fuel. This is not done in a breeder reactor, but rather using centrifuges similar to the ordinary enrichment process. This produces two products: Real waste, and a precursor to fresh fuel. The waste can be transmuted into less dangerous waste in a breeder reactor or an accelerator-driven reactor. The fuel precursor then needs to have elements such as plutonium removed (unless it is meant to be part of Mox fuel) before it can be recast into its ceramic form and used again in an ordinary LWR.
As noted above, a breeder can be used to transmute the real waste into less dangerous waste, but its primary function is to transmute natural and depleted uranium into usable isotopes through neutron capture in that uranium. Breeders are not reprocessing facilities.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not talking about reprocessing fuel for use in thermal reactors, although as long as there are still legacy nuke plants in good shape we might as well keep fueling them.
Make. Power. With. Fast. Reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_cooled_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_cooled_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org]
These aren't research or materials test reactors. They do reprocess fuel, but mainly for their own consumption.
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:4, Funny)
Build the FBR on the moon.
I think we all know how that ends [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Solar energy is very low density. It's used in spacecraft (out til about Mars) because except for RTGs [wikipedia.org] it's a lot cheaper than launching fuel into orbit. For terrestrial applications ho
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
and Nevadans/Greeks are not fond of that idea.
So what you are saying is that they aren't being team players?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that plutonium is a man-made material. We make it from uranium by bombarding it with high energy particles. So if you run out of uranium, you also run out of plutonium. This is of course dependant on us not discovering alchemy in the next 10 years. To be honest, that would be pretty awesome, if watching TV has taught me anything.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that plutonium is a man-made material. We make it from uranium by bombarding it with high energy particles. So if you run out of uranium, you also run out of plutonium. This is of course dependant on us not discovering alchemy in the next 10 years. To be honest, that would be pretty awesome, if watching TV has taught me anything.
You're right, but also wrong. Plutonium is made from U238 (emphasis on 238). The nuclear fuel that we're using right now is U235. There is one hundred and fifty times more U238 in the ground than U235. So, by switching to plutonium, we expand the available supply of uranium by a factor of 150.
The whole debate about uranium fuel reserves is totally ludicrous. An utterly simple back of the envelope calculation demonstrates that the Earth contains sufficient uranium to supply fission power for billions of years [stanford.edu]. Uranium fuel will last literally longer than solar power (since the sun's remaining lifetime is only 5 billion years). Yet periodically we see attention whores showing up in Slashdot articles and crying that we will run out of uranium, a statement which is so obviously wrong that it is hard to explain by incompetence and bordering on the realm of malice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3% growth (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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%
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You should be calculating the amount of uranium in the surface of the earth, not the volume. Deep mining is less realistic than asteroid mining; it's unlikely to ever happen. Practically speaking, at current demand and growth rates, with enrichment, u238 buys us only a couple hundred years. ("Only.")
But hey, eventually we'll switch to the thorium cycle, and then fusion, and scarcity will actually vanish.
If you actually read the calculations, they are done using only uranium in the crust (in fact, using only uranium in seawater). There is no deep mining, or indeed any sort of mining, required.
The growth rate concern is unrealistic, as it has been mentioned already that no constant growth rate is sustainable indefinitely, under any energy technology. The amount of uranium we lose from natural radioactive decay (half life of 4.5 billion years for U238) exceeds any amount that we are likely to consume for fu
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Plutonium is man-made. It's more of a method for energy storage than an energy source.
Which is what makes Uranium nice since we can just dig it out of the ground. And I think that the claim that we don't know where to dig next is a little overblown. Uranium decays naturally into Radon gas which seeps up from the ground. That is, you can detect a Uranium deposit by gas chromatography and without digging.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
I mention this (Score:3, Insightful)
Everytime nuclear fission comes up as a possible viable alternative. Peak Uranium is as real as peak oil, and it's here now.
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Insightful)
And oh yea, we should be investigating Thorium reactors. Thorium is plentiful in the Earth's crust. That's a better way to go than uranium.
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Insightful)
And oh yea, we should be investigating Thorium reactors.
That's fine, but our entire nuclear energy infrastructure is built around uranium. It's not like you can put different fuel in a reactor and just carry on with the plants online today.
This is going to be interesting.
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Insightful)
Building an all-new infrastructure vs. not and running out of fuel.
It's an easy decision, and a painful one too.
Re: (Score:2)
Not like our infrastructure is in good shape anyway; a lot of it is overdue for replacement. Might as well build new thorium plants as opposed to building new uranium plants.
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm just glad that out corporate overlords at ExxonMobil made it for us. That's a load off my mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Informative)
Existing CANDU plants can already use Thorium.
The infrastructure already exists for those bright enough to use an awesome design like CANDU.
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/brat_fuel.htm [nuclearfaq.ca]
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Funny)
Solar power IS nuclear power, we've just offshored the actual reactor. Some loss of energy occurs during transport, though.
If we run out of Sun, running my hairdryer is going to get really low on my list of priorities, really fast.
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Solar power IS nuclear power, we've just offshored the actual reactor. Some loss of energy occurs during transport, though.
If we run out of Sun, running my hairdryer is going to get really low on my list of priorities, really fast.
Wait... I thought Oracle was fixing that.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You want to go out with wet hair in winter?
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Informative)
Our global temperature is affected by three factors:
1. Amount of energy input.
2. Amount of energy stored or released.
3. Amount of energy radiated.
The amount of energy entering the Earth's atmosphere is, for all intents and purposes, a constant. The Sun is almost completely responsible for all of that.
If I have a black roof on my house, my roof will absorb the sunlight shining on it and turn it into heat. If I interrupt that with a solar collector, ~90% of it will still become heat, and ~10% of it will become electricity. As I use the electricity to do stuff, it generates heat. Including the losses over the wires, etc.
Net result: There isn't a significant difference in the actual amount of heat, only how we use the potential energy in sunlight before it turns into heat. Entropy is like that.
As far as the other two factors, we stored a crapload of solar energy and sequestered a crapload of carbon dioxide a long time ago in the form of dead plants and critters. That matter decayed and turned into what we now call "coal" and "oil". Burning those releases both that energy and CO2. CO2 is an insulator and therefore reduces heat radiation.
So if you use solar (or one if its indirect factors, like biofuel or wind) you get three wins - you're using heat that would be there anyway, you're not adding more heat, and you're not releasing sequestered material that may help the earth retain heat.
You do, however, get one loss. We've already built a HUGE infrastructure for using sequestered energy and built our demand around it. Direct and indirect solar has a long way to go before it can replace all of our wants, if it ever can. At some point, mankind is going to have to face "want" versus "need".
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
There are numerous ways to make PV cells [wikipedia.org], including the much cheaper dye based [wikipedia.org], and they keep coming up with new ones all the time, and we just won't run out* of materials to make solar thermal [wikipedia.org] 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
Ya (Score:3, Insightful)
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 an
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I agree. In fact, we are already doing that in my apartment building. The roof is covered with around 35 m^2 of photovoltaic panels, which are expected to provide 3500 kWh annually, and there is a carpool of one electric car (more will be added if the project is successful) to be used by the apartment owners. Sure, the power provided by the panels is not much, but then this is a one-year pilot project between the construction company (Skanska) that built our apartment building and the local power supplier (
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Insightful)
Seconded.
ATTENTION WORLD GOVERNMENTS:
Fund. Fucking. Thorium. Fuel. Cycle. Research.
PLEASE.
Re: (Score:2)
Blah blah U233, blah blah, weapons grade, blah blah blah.
In terms of pure science, all this stuff is common sense, but you have to overcome the political angle as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the parent might be talking about the fact that it's exactly because you can't breed useful weapons-grade fissile material from thorium that the technology has not been pursued...
Re: (Score:2)
ATTENTION WORLD GOVERNMENTS:
Fund. Fucking. Thorium. Fuel. Cycle. Research.
They've already done the first two items on your list. Thorium should be next.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1 Where have not been any new Uranium mines opened in many years because of the low demand and price. In fact a lot of uranium mines have closed for that very reason.
2. We have not used much of the stockpiled Plutonium of which there is a a good amount.
3. We have a lot of un reprocessed nuclear fuel which contains a lot of usable fuel.
4. We are not using breeder reactors on a large scale which will greatly increase the supply of nuclear fuel.
Peak Uranium will happen but we also can use Thorium as a fuel and
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Does research continue on OTEC? It seems like it's been years since I read about any active OTEC projects.
In regards to your concern about wind power, a mindbogglingly large amount of energy passes through the atmosphere daily (absorbed and released). I can't imagine that wind farms could possibly have a significant impact. Whether or not it amounts to anything, it is good to think about such things.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The last time I did back-of-the-envelope math on it, uranium looks like 50 years worth of proven reserves, 500 or so with reprocessing, and close to 50,000 years if you use thorium, assuming you use it for *all* the energy needs, the use per-person will resemble the first world energy needs, and the global population continues to follow the logistic curve with an asymptote between 9 and 12 billion people.
Which, IMO, gives us plenty of time to get the next energy generating technology going, probably solar-t
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Fusion... (Score:2, Troll)
Nobody wants to invest in a commodity. It's a cash sink. No profit in selling "free."
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad we're talking about FISSION.
Anyway, it's never FREE. Even if the process is better than break even, that doesn't mean FREE. Oil wells are better than break even, and you don't hear anyone talking about "free oil". The best you're ever going to get with energy is cheap, not free.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Look how that panned out.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
thorium (Score:2)
arent the Indians using that now and its more plentiful
Re: (Score:2)
Lunar Uranium mines before 2013?
Man up and build fast-breeder reactors. (Score:2)
Use Thorium-based reactors instead (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That last part is why. :'|
Re:Use Thorium-based reactors instead (Score:4, Informative)
And you can't use them to make nuclear weapons.
That last part is why. :'|
And also ridiculously misinformed. From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The thorium fuel cycle creates mainly Uranium-233 which can be used for making nuclear weapons, and since there are no neutrons from spontaneous fission of U-233, U-233 can be used easily in a gun-type nuclear bomb. Thorium can and has been used to power nuclear energy plants using both the modified traditional Generation III reactor design and prototype Generation IV reactor designs.
Citation here [harvard.edu].
Re:Use Thorium-based reactors instead (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the *entire* Wikipedia article on the Thorium fuel cycle, you would understand why Thorium is proliferation resistant instead of calling the parent "ridiculously misinformed".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle [wikipedia.org]
"Because the 233U produced in thorium fuels is inevitably contaminated with 232U, thorium-based used nuclear fuel possesses inherent proliferation resistance. Uranium-232 can not be chemically separated from 233U and has several decay products which emit high energy gamma radiation. These high energy photons are a radiological hazard that necessitate the use of remote handling of separated uranium and aid in the passive detection of such materials."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor [wikipedia.org]
"It is verifiable because the epithermal thorium breeder produces only at most 9% more fuel than it burns in each year. Building bombs quickly will take power plants out of operation."
Basically, because almost all naturally occurring Thorium is 232Th, it's possible to isolate Thorium fuel chemically -- without centrifugation. In other words, a country that uses Thorium exclusively for fuel has no reason to develop centrifugation technology. On the other hand, separating 233U from 232U requires centrifugation. Thus, aforementioned countries would be unable to access the 233U they produce for bomb-building purposes.
Also, the poor breeder coefficient of 233U Thorium reactors means that most of the 233U produced by the reactor is required to produce the neutrons that convert fertile Thorium into more 233U. If you were to remove the 233U from the reactor for use in a bomb, you would halt additional production of 233U by the reactor. Either you would have to harvest very little 233U over a long period of time, or you would have to supplement the Thorium fuel with some other fissile material such as bomb-grade plutonium (and if you already had access to that, you wouldn't be trying to produce bomb-grade material in the first place).
While it's possible to produce a bomb using a the thorium fuel cycle, it is inefficient and requires advanced centrifugation technology to mitigate the 232U. It would be easier to just start with uranium ore.
Re:Use Thorium-based reactors instead (Score:5, Informative)
Just to silence the "citation please" trolls who can't use google:
Energy from Thorium [blogspot.com]
Nuclear Green [blogspot.com]
Disclaimer: the second link goes to my uncle's blog. My grandfather worked on the original liquid fluoride thorium reactor at ORNL, and my uncle has advocated the technology for quite some time.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much none of that is correct, unfortunately. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, but not by such a massive factor. There's no fissile isotope of thorium, so we'd have to start them on uranium. Current reactors will not breed in the thorium cycle, and it's questionable to what extend this is practical. The waste lasts for hundreds of years, reprocessing and fabrication for thorium fuel is not developed and U-233 (which the fissile isotope in the thorium cycle) certainly could be used to make a nucl
Re:Use Thorium-based reactors instead (Score:5, Interesting)
"The people working on ITER clearly don't agree."
Er, no.
There are plenty of people working on ITER who do agree. But they figure that it's a worthy endeavor without necessarily being a commercially viable final product. (ie They think we'll learn a lot from doing it.)
Plus, it's funded by the EU and they're just throwing money it at with very little expectation of anything in return.
Get it out of your system (Score:2)
Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone,
Yeah, yeah, I know what that was building up to:
"40k ought to be enough for anyone", &c.
Iranium? (Score:5, Funny)
Uranium is for infidels and suckers. Iranium is the future of nuclear development!
Energy diversity (Score:2)
And this is why we need to diversify our energy production. There are other radioactive sources we can use as fuel. Thorium, plutonium, and other nuclear 'waste' can still be used as long as we build reactors for them. (Once the public gets its head out of its ass and stops this ZOMG nucular waste dirty bombs terrists nonsense. But what are the odds of that?)
also a helium-3 shortage (Score:3, Interesting)
Non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
True but... (Score:2)
2. But no, we are not running out. There is plenty of Uraninum, we just need to mine it. We stopped mining it when the Russians began dissasembling their nukes. It was a lot cheaper to buy it from them (not to mention safer, as we ended up with the uranium instead of less reputable people).
3. All we have to do is start enriching, prospectin
2012 (Score:2)
Maybe this is what the Mayan calendar was really predicting, the shortage of all natural resources, oil, food, uranium, coal, gold, natural gas, water (aliens stealing it) etc.
Just sayin what everyone else is thinkin.
That means... (Score:2)
> the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient
> to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.
In the veriest fraction of a second that this idea becomes
Conventional Wisdom, the first commercially-viable fusion
reactor will start up without a hitch.
Research (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have no idea where you get your facts, but I look at tables that compare various energy sources and the cost of electricity associated with them. If you build plants of all available types nuclear is the cheapest, by a large margin. The most expensive being solar. Solar was something around 3x the price as nuclear.
There are may reasons why studies show skewed results when comparing numbers. Alot of nuclear power plants were built and then never produced a single kWh of electricity. Those costs are in
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You aren't factoring in the cost of liability insurance for nuclear power plants and nuclear waste dumps.
Oh, that's right - nuclear power plants don't really pay all that much for liability insurance. Why is that? Oh yeah, because the government doesn't require them to - I think the pool they do pay into is currently sitting on a pitiful $10 billion in cash, which could easily be wiped out by a single nuclear accident. So, why aren't they forced to carry at least a few billion in coverage per-plant, the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the long run, nuclear fission reactors will still be pretty dangerous. If not carefully run and monitored, they can blow or be deliberately detonated to contaminate a vast area.
That danger factor means that we can't ever have totally automated plants, and we can't lower the cost of building a reactor by deliberately cutting corners where we don't think it will matter.
Solar is going to be the only main source of power in the long run. It's entirely conceivable to make a factory that can make solar panel
Something just seemed subtly wrong with it... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It Is Just a Matter of Price (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I have to say that roaming around sucking on the brains of the living sounds more exciting than existing as a severed head in a tank of liquid nitrogen waiting for my investments to mature.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, if you go into the tank, you're now a frozen TV dinner. You won't even get the chance to welcome your new zombie overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, those 20 x 5 litre jugs are going to last the human race forever !
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 a
Re: (Score:2)
Well, technically, don't they use heavy isotopes?
Re:The folly of natural resource-based energy (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 numbe
Re:The folly of natural resource-based energy (Score:5, Funny)
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!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.