Again, it's how fast you can get it out of the ground that matters.
I was thinking I had read peak at 2025, but they seem to be bringing it in closer. On top of that, a bunch of countries are headed in that direction, driving demand even faster.
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Because Martin Sevior has portrayed the view of the nuclear industry, this post will explain what the other camp has to say. While I could address his post point by point, it would result in a very large article that nobody would read. So I have opted to first answer just one point, Uranium production, which I chose both because it is most similar to the PO depletion theme, readers should be familiar with some of its challenges, and because a new study sheds new light on it.
The biggest issue I have with nuclear energy proponents, including some members of TOD community, is that they just repeat what the nuclear industry sales men say. A good example is the post by Martin Sevior. It repeats their arguments without a shadow of doubt nor criticism. The same highly educated, Peak Oil literate individuals who know about OPEC resource mis-reporting, and can tell the difference between KSA reserves and Canada's, the difference between light crude oil and tar sands and know who Yergin and CERA are, believe all the arguments of the nuclear industry word by word. Why that is so, I do not know.
TODers should know that even though Canada now has greater stated reserves than KSA, tar sands will never reach OPEC production volumes. Reserves, and R/P ratio is not the same as a production profile, which produces a peak well before complete exhaustion. Uranium, like any other resource, can't be mined at any desired rate, nor every last drop or ounce of the resource can be mined. No matter the technology, at some point it is just not worth it to mine lower grade ores. While energy balance analysis are complicated and a discussion about it would only bring controversy, another way of putting it is more easily grasped. For any mined ore, the lower the grade, the higher the material throughput you need to process. There is always a limit. And despite what the nuclear industry might tell you, for Uranium too. The materials throughput (not unrelated to the energy needed) is inversely proportional to the ore grade for any mined material: To extract 1 kg of uranium out of 1% ore containing material needs the processing of 100 kg. Extracting the same amount from 0.01% ore needs the processing of 10,000 kg. You can easily see that even if, for the sake of the argument we assume that the EROEI of nuclear energy for all ore grades is positive, there are physical limits to the production throughput Uranium production can ever reach. So what should be done is not just to list possible Uranium reserves, but also to analyze the maximum throughput attainable by the mining industry. That is: The Uranium production profile for the world.
The recently formed Energy Working Group has recently published a paper titled URANIUM RESOURCES AND NUCLEAR ENERGY. I will now explain their work. All figures and quotations are taken from this paper.
About the Energy Watch Group
This is the first of a series of papers by the Energy Watch Group which are addressed to investigate future energy supply and demand patterns. The Energy Watch Group consists of independent scientists and experts who investigate sustainable concepts for global energy supply. The group is initiated by the German member of parliament Hans-Josef Fell.
SUMMARY
Any forecast of the development of nuclear power in the next 25 years has to concentrate on two aspects, the supply of uranium and the addition of new reactor capacity. At least within this time horizon, neither nuclear breeding reactors nor thorium reactors will play a significant role because of the long lead times for their development and market penetration. This assessment results in the conclusion that in the short term, until about 2015, the long lead times of new and the decommissioning of ageing reactors perform the barrier for fast extension, and after about 2020 severe uranium supply shortages become likely which, again will limit the extension of nuclear energy.
theoildrum.com
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The supply of uranium has already reached its peak, in 1981. There are 440 nuclear reactors worldwide,
and the world produces just over half the uranium ore these plants consume each year.
At present, the gap is filled by using the plutonium from dismantled cold war nuclear weapon stockpiles.
But this source is drying up and will end by 2013, so the industry is trying to find and develop new uranium
mines, mainly in Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan. However, those under development will fill only half
the current gap, not to mention new demand from the 28 nuclear plants under construction worldwide,
added to China's plan to build 30 new plants by 2020. As a result, about a quarter of nuclear power plants
could be forced to shut down within a decade because of a lack of fuel.
Developing a uranium mine is expensive and complex since the material is hazardous - it takes about 15
years from discovery to production. Therefore, even if a massive effort were now launched to find and
develop new mines, there will still be an eight-year gap after 2013. China is already scrambling to corner
contracts for uranium ore, and uranium prices have soared by 400% over the past six years.
Message 22531195
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As mentioned in an article a few months ago, there are know Uranium deposits of 6 billion pounds globally, with annual consumption of 180 million pounds. Figure 2 illustrates the different projections of uranium depletion, pending an increase in annual consumption rates of 3%, 5% or 8%. Currently, uranium production falls incredibly short of the demand. As oil resources become scarce, uranium will have more pressure put upon it as a resource. All three different scenarios have a similar course until around 2013, where they part trails. By 2020, there is a serious uranium shortage.
Figure 2
Let's assume a Pollyanna position and assume that uranium deposits can be doubled up in the coming decade. Figure 3 illustrates the 3 different scenarios, depending on the net increase in consumption per year. Rather than 2013 being a focal year, it is stretched out by 3 years to 2016.
Figure 3
The upper end of the percentage increases in yearly uranium demand is likely to occur, rather than a paltry 3%/year. The dynamics of all three curves assume demand is constant. As society moves down the road of declining oil production, there will be evolutionary inventions that will be revolutionary, death, death of the automobile etc. causing the curves to become skewered, likely a gentler slope. The important point to focus on is change, it is coming quickly and silently, like a thief in the night.
Message 21474061
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Technologies such as thorium, reprocessing and fast breeders can, in theory, considerably extend the life of uranium reserves. Roscoe Bartlett claims [17]
“ Our current throwaway nuclear cycle uses up the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years. ”
Caltech physics professor David Goodstein has stated [18] that
“ ... you would have to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering standards in order to replace the 10 terawatts of fossil fuel we're burning today ... that's a staggering amount and if you did that, the known reserves of uranium would last for 10 to 20 years at that burn rate. So, it's at best a bridging technology ... You can use the rest of the uranium to breed plutonium 239 then we'd have at least 100 times as much fuel to use. But that means you're making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous world that we live in.
en.wikipedia.org
Don't know about Th availability |
