Uranium and being kind to Kazakhstan
Regular readers of these writing will recall that I have been critical of Business Secretary John Hutton’s call for a nuclear energy renaissance; I am sure that the nuclear industry cannot guarantee safe disposal of waste and I have also been sure that the carbon emission costs of nuclear are nowhere near as low as the industry claims.
Dr Gavin Mudd of the University of Monash in Australia is a mining expert. He has already analysed many mineral ores and is work has authority. Last October he published a study of Australian mineral ores looking at data going back to 1829 and concluded that ore grades continue to decline, solid wastes from mining are increasing exponentially and coal and iron ore mineral ores have peaked, plateaued and that gold and copper are about to peak.
He has now turned his attention to uranium, which is important to Australia. I got the table below from the Australian Uranium Association and it shows you that if Mr Hutton’s nuclear renaissance does take place we have to be very nice to Australia, Canada and… Kazakhstan, otherwise we will not have any fuel for all our nuclear reactors.
Known Recoverable Resources of Uranium
|
|
tonnes |
% of world |
|
Australia |
1,143,000 |
24% |
|
Kazakhstan |
816,000 |
17% |
|
Canada |
444,000 |
9% |
|
USA |
342,000 |
7% |
|
South Africa |
341,000 |
7% |
|
Namibia |
282,000 |
6% |
|
Brazil |
279,000 |
6% |
|
Niger |
225,000 |
5% |
|
Russian Fed. |
172,000 |
4% |
|
Uzbekistan |
116,000 |
2% |
|
World total |
4,743,000 |
|
Dr Mudd thinks that greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear energy are rising rapidly. As the high grade ore declines so the environmental and emission cost of mining lower grade uranium ore increases.
Nuclear energy is not a zero emission source of energy. You have to find the ore, mine it, mill it, enrich it and make nuclear fuel, all of which needs energy which comes from fossil fuel. You then have to build the plant, a massive emission cost in itself, and then decommission it. If you look at the overall emission cost of nuclear energy there are these carbon emission costs and Dr Mudd reports that they will rise.
I have no doubt that proponents of nuclear energy will try to find a bright side in Dr Mudd’s findings. The nuclear generated emissions will still be lower than fossil fuel emissions and it is possible that the nuclear industry could use uranium more efficiently than they do, if they can get the fast breeder technology right.
It already costs 27 tonnes of greenhouse gas to mine a single tonne of uranium ore and to get a single tonne of uranium oxide you have to make 2,400 tonnes of low level radioactive waste which has got to be dealt with somehow.
I emailed Dr Mudd to ask him about his findings and in particular what he thought the CO2/kWh factor of uranium was and when he though uranium might peak. I think it best to set out his answer in full, because it is easy to mislead or sensationalise the work of a respectable scientist, and I want to avoid that:
Thanks for your email. The CO2 / kWhr is a tricky estimate to make!
The data in my paper clearly shows that, from a mine basis only, the ore grade is the most critical aspect underpinning such an estimate, and that the ore grade is likely to continue to decline gradually in the future. As to how ‘fast’ I have deliberately not predicted as it is impossible to predict exploration success, markets, production, technology etc - the critical aspect to me is that the CO2 cost will gradually rise as ore grades decline.
For a ‘peak’, I don’t think uranium will peak due to limited resources - it will peak due to the collapse of nuclear power and the problems with energy and water. Oil’s peak is governed mostly by the increasingly difficult nature of resources and their declining quantity, but I believe uranium will be different - energy and water will constrain the peak.
So the UK government’s idea of a nuclear renaissance might well end up as a medium carbon emission option which will provide us with energy but we have to be kind to Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan.
Filed under: John Hutton, carbon emissions, climate change, energy, gas, global warming, nuclear, nuclear energy, oil | Tagged: Australia, Gavin Mudd, kazakhstan, Monash, peak uranium
only one thing is unlimited, solar irradiation. if the government did NOT get it. their generation will be suffering from that.
Robert, 30 billion cost to build 10 new clear plan by 2020? how many PV and Solar Panel we could installer? 3 million houses suiltable for Solar, so 10,000 pounds could be spent on 3 millino houses.
In this installation volume, we could basically make 30% all UK houses self-sufficient!
Shame on Labour!!!
Legato
You’re quite right but I suppose that this idea is just too simple, it will work and there will be no adverse by products, and therefore it won’t be done!
Robert
Borat would be so proud to see his country Kazakhstan so high in this league table, above the USA…!
The CO2 / kWhr calculation is hard to conclude from the start as you show to the end when this electricity passes through electric meters and it is measured as kwhr however even this could be over optimistic because of losses in the usage of this energy for example to heat water and one only has to look at experiments to measure the specific heat capacity of water there are lots of losses occurring. Solar thermal wins not just because it is cleaner but because it works better and makes more financial sense.
However it [solar thermal] does not make handy quantities plutonium to make warheads with.
Peter
There has been some work on the CO2/kWh of nuclear and it seesm to come out about the same as solar thermal, provided you use high grade ore.
Shame that my product doesn’t offer any plutonium, though!
regards
Robert
Robert, it would seem unfair to compare/benchmark by measurement of CO2/kwh because Solar thermal is actually putting the energy directly into the water to heat it to a required temperature, so it would be more fair to measure CO2 (emissions)/°C(Temperature rise of water) also Solar thermal will never cause a catastrophe such as Chernobyl or three mile island.
There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics. I think the comparison of Solar thermal with nuclear would be statistics?