Will uranium supply be adequate for planned nuclear electricity? This question has seen sharply differing views. The purpose of this post is to give an update, showing where we are now.
The supply situation is recently looking better, partly because of an increase in uranium supply from Kazakhstan and partly because of cutbacks in plans for new reactors in response to the Fukushima accident. Reactors are very long-lived, however, and providing sufficient long-term uranium supply when oil supply is declining due to peak oil may be a challenge.
Figure 1. World uranium production and demand (Graph by World Nuclear Association)
Background
Figure 1 shows a history of uranium consumption and uranium mined. The reason that supply from mines can be less than current uses is because some of the supply is from previously mined uranium. Back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, far more uranium was mined than was needed for peaceful purposes. A large part of this excess uranium was used by both the United States and the Soviet Union to make nuclear bombs. Some of it was stockpiled as well.
Since governments don’t normally give out details relating to strategic materials, not all of the details are known regarding the uranium mined during the early period. For example, we don’t know precisely how much uranium was mined by the Former Soviet Union (Figure 1 shows one estimate), and we don’t know how much excess military inventory Russia has today.
We do know that a large amount of this previoulsly-mined uranium has made its way to the uranium marketplace. Starting in 1994, the Russians entered into a 20 year agreement called Megatons to Megawatts to sell recycled nuclear bomb material to the United States, for use in nuclear power reactors. Since this program is scheduled to end in 2013, one question that has been raised is whether the marketplace will be able to create enough increased production soon enough, to meet the market’s needs.
Several studies were done that came to the conclusion that there likely would be a gap of some kind–too slow ramp up of new mines, or concerns about inadequate reserves, or “peak uranium.” One of these was a study in 2001 by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Another was a study by Energy Watch Group in 2006. The Oil Drum ran a series of four posts by Michael Dittmar in 2009 that also forecast shortages.
Individual commenters have questioned whether these studies were correct. The huge overhang of excess inventory depressed prices. With so much supply flowing into the marketplace from recycled bomb material and other inventory, there wasn’t a need for a great deal of current production. Perhaps the relatively low reserve numbers simply reflected the low prices of the day.
Now that we are getting closer to the 2013 date, we can see better what is actually happening in the market place. We know that 2013 is not an absolute cut off. Russia may still continue to sell some recycled bomb material, although it will no longer will have an obligation to do so, and the prices will likely be higher. The United States also has a considerable amount of excess inventory that with reprocessing could be used by nuclear reactors. (See 2008 report and 2009 presentation).
We can also see from Figure 1 that for the year 2010, uranium mining is producing 78% of current use–a big improvement over the situation a few years ago. US legislation passed in 2008 placed annual quotas on Russian imports, presumably to try to help markets function more normally.
Uranium Supply and Prices
Figure 2. World uranium production by country, based on data of the World Nuclear Association.
Recent uranium production is higher because of increased production from Kazakhstan. Apart from Kazakhstan, production is flat or slightly declining. Kazakhstan claims that it has the ability to eventually ramp up production to 30,000 metric tonnes per year, but indicates that it is planning an output plateau of 20,000 to 25,000 metric tonnes a year. Its production was 17,803 metric tonnes in 2010, so it is not too far from its planned plateau.
If Kazakhstan were the only source of new supply, there would likely still be a gap between demand and current production, because even at 30,000 metric tonnes, Kazakhstan wouldn’t by itself make up the shortfall, although it would come close, if no new reactors are opened. Besides Kazakhstan, there seems to be other new supply planned. From Australia we read:
YELLOWCAKE export out of Port Adelaide is poised to increase almost sevenfold over coming years.
About 5000 tonnes of uranium oxide, or yellowcake, is now shipped out of Port Adelaide, but a combination of new SA mines, the Olympic Dam expansion and new West Australian mines will lift exports to about 37,000 tonnes a year in about 15 years.
So the uranium / nuclear plant balance doesn’t look as bleak as a few years ago. Uranium production is now rising because of supply from Kazakhstan, and more production elsewhere is planned. One thing that is helping supply is higher prices.
Figure 3. EIA's average price of uranium purchased operators of US nuclear reactors. (EIA Graph)
Prices are clearly substantially higher since 2008, and these higher prices seem to be stimulating supply. (Spot prices are now $54.25, or a little higher than recent average contract prices. Most uranium is sold on long-term contracts.) It takes several years for new mines to ramp up, so some of the higher price effect is not yet being felt.
At its current price, the cost of uranium is only a small share of the price of nuclear electricity. According to the World Nuclear Association, as of March 2011, uranium costs amounted to the equivalent to 0.77 cents per kWh, which is less than one-tenth of the typical sales price of electricity. Because of this, there would seem to be “room” for uranium prices to rise further, without being a major obstacle to electricity sales.
Figure 4. US Uranium Production (Figure by EIA)
In the United States, uranium production has varied (Figure 4). Even at the higher production levels since 2006, uranium production is still very low compared to the amount used by the United States (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Portion of US Uranium Use from US Sources (EIA Graph)
Demand for Uranium
Clearly, the adequacy of uranium supply depends partly on demand–how many reactors are being built or being taken off-line.
Figure 6. Nuclear power generation by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Data.
Figure 6 shows that electricity from nuclear power plants grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of new plants tapered off after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, although ones in the planning stages at the time of the accident were still built. Since 2004, nuclear electricity production has been on a bumpy plateau. Because of the lack in growth in nuclear use, there has not been much need for new uranium production, except to offset the longstanding shortfall in uranium mined compared to current use.
Now, following the Fukushima accident in Japan (March 11, 2011), many countries are again rethinking their commitment to nuclear power generation. Germany has closed eight of its older nuclear reactors permanently and is making plans to close the other nine by 2022. A referendum in Italy has rejected a plan to generate 25% of the country’s electrical power from nuclear by 2030. Switzerland has said it will not replace its five nuclear power plants when they reach the ends of their useful lives.
In the absence of changes because of the Fukushima accident, the World Nuclear Association information shows that a large number of nuclear facilities are under construction, planned or proposed. If all of the nuclear power plants that have been proposed are actually built, nuclear generating capacity would more than double from the 2010 level. Just adding the reactors that are under construction or planned would increase world nuclear electricity capacity by 62%.
The countries that are building new capacity include many non-OECD countries. The country with the largest number of planned facilities is China, with 26 reactors under construction, 52 reactors planned, and 120 reactors proposed, for a total of 198 reactors. If all of these were to be built, China would have approximately double the nuclear capacity that the US has today. (The United States is currently the world’s largest producer of nuclear electricity.)
The two countries behind China in adding new reactors are Russia and India. Russia currently has 10 nuclear power plants under construction, 14 planned, and another 30 proposed, making a theoretical total of 54. India has 5 under construction, 18 planned, and 40 proposed, for a theoretical total of 63 new reactors. The list of countries planning new reactors is very long, and includes many from the “Emerging Markets,” including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, and Vietnam.
What seems likely to happen is that some OECD countries will scale back their nuclear power plans, and even take some off-line, after the Fukushima accident. It is not as clear that the rest of the world will take similar actions. Electricity use has been rising much more rapidly outside the OECD than in the OECD. As a result, many of the countries outside the OECD see a pressing need for new sources of electricity, and few other good options. I would expect that many of these countries will go forward with their nuclear plans if they can figure out the financing to make these plants feasible. They may find ways to cut corners (like putting them next to the ocean, with once-through cooling with sea water) to keep costs down. If planning is not good enough, short-cuts can raise accident possibilities, though.
We will have to wait and see how this all works out, in terms of implications for needed nuclear fuel. The situation doesn’t look as bleak as it did a few years ago because of new uranium sources, but adequate supply is not entirely a “done deal” either. In their 2001 study, “Analysis of Uranium Supply to 2050,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed the graph I show as Figure 7 as their forecast of future uranium production. (The IEAE is now saying Latest Data Shows Long-Term Security of Uranium Supply, so it has backed off from the 2001 assessment shown in Figure 7.)
Figure 7. IEAE Uranium Supply Forecast from "Analysis of Uranium Supply to 2050"
Figure 7 shows the shape of curve a person would expect uranium supply to have–rising to a peak, and then declining, since it is a finite resource, like oil, or like copper. New sources of uranium supply will be helpful, but eventually mines will begin to deplete, and we will be faced with finding new sources. Instead of talking about finding “new Saudi Arabias of oil,” we may someday talk about the need for “new Kazakhstans of uranium.”
Besides finding additional uranium supply, there may be other “work arounds.” With nuclear energy, there is at least the possibility of reprocessing spent fuel, but suitable reprocessing facilities need to be built in advance, if this is the plan. There is also the possibility of thorium being used in some of the yet-to-be-built reactors, if the details of making thorium work can be figured out.
One question those building nuclear plants should be thinking about is, “What impact will peak oil have on uranium availability?” Theoretically, uranium production can go on as before, if there is sufficient oil for essential services (extracting the uranium, maintaining the roads, raising the food that the workers need to eat, and transporting the uranium to where it is used, for example). Whether or not this whole process can go on for the 50 or 60 year lifetime of reactors now being built is an open question. Adequate oil supply will also be needed during the period of decommissioning, and for servicing spent fuel, after the reactors close.
Previous Estimates
Back in 2009, Michael Dittmar and Brian Wang made a bet regarding how world uranium production would progress and how nuclear power generation would progress, with Michael Dittmar betting on the low side, and Brian Wang betting on the high side.
For the year 2010, it looks as though Brian Wang won both bets. Brian Wang bet that uranium production would be above 50,500 metric tonnes. World uranium production was 53,663 metric tonnes, so Brian was the winner.
With respect to electricity generated from nuclear energy, the dividing line between the two bets was 2,630 billion kWe. Actual generation was 2767 billion kWe according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, so again Brian is the winner.
There is no actual money changing hands with respect to this bet. The only prize I remember hearing about was a possible bottle of wine for me.
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I have no doubt that nuclear technology can, in theory, meet our needs in a satisfactory manner.
However, the thing to keep in mind is the reality of our political technology. It is completely inadequate to ensure that the interests involved (public and private) can be trusted in their current form, or even designed on a whiteboard, to ensure continued safety or satisfactory utilitarian compromises. Such a design is simply unprecedented. Nuclear energy has the potential (and frankly, the reality) to name winners and losers on a scale that is unprecedented in any other area of energy development policy. Capital interests have always held sway over quality of life issues for the majority, and safety is negotiable based on oversight and raw valuation of actual lives.
The other side of the coin is that, just like oil and gas, US uranium stocks consist of small amounts of relatively easily extracted/processed (cheap) reserves alongside a majority of very costly reserves. The gradients that separate the difficulties in extraction are far steeper than for petroleum. And the costs go well beyond financial impacts as the largest reserves would, using today’s technologies, place the largest deposits of fossil water in North America both at demand for use in extraction and simultaneously at risk of contamination from mining (rendering them less useful or useless as an agricultural or domestic commodity).
Investments in using vastly less energy per unit of economic output is still a path least subject to scarcities and volatility. That in itself has value now, and will skyrocket in value in a future paradigm to levels that warrant investment. At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, our well-being is inextricably tied to energy consumption’s volatility and price as a factor of production. Imagine an “economy” where the key factors in its citizens’ well being and health was isolation from scarce energy as the crucial factor of production, or high worker skill levels, or ….
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Japanese designer has big plans for thorium reactors
“The plan calls for a Mini-FUJI Reactor R&D investment of $300 million over a 6 year period of time, with sales beginning in the 5th year. By the 7th year sales are anticipated to reach the level of 50 units a year, and that is expected to reach 200 unites a year by the 10th year. Mini-FUJI reactors are expected to produce 10 MWe and sell for $60 million. The initial manufacturing cost is anticipated to be approximately $40 million, and that figure is expected to drop to $30 million as production rises. Sales are anticipated to reach $12 Billion by the 10th year, with an assumed gross profit from sales of 30%. Thus the potential after tax income of IThEMS would run to $2.5 billion. And this would be before IThEMS brings its major product, the 200 MWe FUJI reactor to the market.
Power from the Mini-FUJI is expected to cost $0.061 per kWh to produce, with an anticipated retail cost of $0.11 per kWh in the United States, and $0.22 per kWh in Japan. It should be noted that the mini-FUJI is a micro scale nuclear generation unit that is not intended to produce base load electricity for the grid. The FUJI is intended to produce base load electricity, and can be expected to sell for considerably less per kWh than the Mini-FUJI, yet it still could make a very large profit. Projecting sales figures out another decade, IThEMS could have $200 billion a year in sales, and profits as high as $60 billion, making it, if everything goes according to plan, the largest energy business in the world.”
from http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-on-ithems-business-plan-fr…
As I understand it, thorium is not yet a proven technology, and is also a potential producer of highly poisonous products, at least in the short term. I, for one, cannot be sanguine about relying on an as yet unproven technology and yet another toxin producing process in the human economy. Even assuming thorium based fission works out very nicely as a method of generating heat, I do not now trust humans to manage affairs well; our track record is very poor. If I were a metaphorical credit rating firm considering a metaphorical thorium reactor credit rating for humanity, I would be very doubtful of humanity’s credit worthiness.
If one is pro-thorium reactors they say it is proven by the reactor Oak Ridge ran in the 60s. If one is anti-thorium reactors they say no one has even built a commercial scale reactor. So one can take ones pick on that point.
A thorium reactor does produce radioactive waste but much less and shorter lived than uranium. It needs to be stored for 300 years versus 100,000 years.
Desperate people will do desperate things.
Thanks for the answer.
So you don’t think that the uranium price in short term (5-10 years) might go to the levels which we saw in 2007? 10 months ago we saw a significant increase in price even though increased production and stockpiles. And if Fukishima accident would not have happend I would be really suprised if it not had continued its increase.
Won’t the 61 reactors that are under construction increas the demand significantly when they are taken into use?
I don’t really understand what people are saying here.
Are you guys saying that there will be a larger supply of uranium (because of stockpiling in Kazhakstan) in the future compared to the demand of uranium? And there fore push the price down? Or are you saying that uranium has peaked and will be more expensive?
I am saying that we are making progress in extracting more uranium. As far as we know, Kazakhstan is producing more uranium now–look at Figure 2.
At one time it looked like there would be a big shortfall in uranium production. Now, at least for the short term we can see, it looks like that there be enough, especially considering that there are stockpiles.
But once peak oil hits in full force, it is going to be harder to have enough oil for mining. So we may still have a problem, but not today.
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If Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors prove to be all that they are touted to be, maybe in a couple of decades China will be selling us LFTRs just as they are now selling us iPhones up from salad-shooters of a decade ago. Not only is thorium claimed to be plentiful enough to last thousands of years, but it is said that LFTRs will happily consume all the “spent” nuclear fuel leftover from what are today considered “conventional” reactors.
By the way, I expanded the background for this post, and made it into a separate section, so if you look back at the post, you will see it is a little different.
I believe the post will run on The Oil Drum tomorrow.
Ikonoclast,
Nice summary except #20 “Therefore our ONLY hope to save all or part of civilisation is to develop renewables NOW as a matter of GLOBAL EMERGENCY priority.”.
The low energy density, low net energy, and dependency on fossil energy (aka high cost) of renewables means that a collapse cannot be avoided. This fact will be reinforced by other significant problems like soil, aquifer, and fisheries depletion.
Our wisest path is to voluntarily get ahead of the coming involuntary population and consumption collapse. In other words, have fewer children and consume less.
Because I advocate renewable energy sources as the only long term possibility for energy production, people assume I am sanguine about saving global civilisation from a series of dire concsequences. Stating something is an “only hope” is not the same as saying it is a certain or even a probable hope. On the other hand, assuming that total and catastrophic collapse will occur absolutely uniformly everywhere on earth is taking the analysis of nihilistic despair a little too far and it is not consistent with all the facts.
A key aspect of serious global civilisational retrenchment (rather than total collapse) will be the re-regionalisation and re-localisation of the world. High energy use international transport (air and sea) dependent on oil will certainly decline massively. International trade will decline and more countries and regions will become dependent once again on regional and local products. This re-regionalisation and re-localisation of economic activity will act against a uniform global collapse. Rather we will see serious regional collapses and other regions and localities which will show remarkable resilience to total collapse.
Australia (where I live) is a case in point. We are not yet as seriously overpopulated as most of the world, so the collapse which will collapse or cap regional populations (as the cases may variously be) will tend to cap (stop further growth) rather than collapse Australia’s population. As fossil fuels pass peak use, Australia is well placed to follow the so-called land export model. That is we will use our endowment rather than export it. We are very deficient in oil (especially the heavy fractions) but we are richly endowed with gas, coal, uranium, sunlight, wind and wide open spaces for large area solar and wind farms. Australia simply needs to follow the path of semi-autarky with respect to energy supplies and other resources. The USA as an advanced continental power is also well placed to make the transition although its fossil fuel and uranium endowment is not now as healthy realtively speaking as Australia’s. On the other hand the USA is richly endowed in sun, wind, hydro and geo power possibilities
Areas of the world which are headed for disaster and do not seem to have the scientific or social development necessary to make anything like a successful transition (or are already too over-populated) include Africa, the Middle East, large parts of Asia and large parts of Central and South America.
The discounting of the possibilities of solar and wind power go too far in this blog. The more I investigate it, the more I find that total power and EROIE available from these sources (in a large continental country) is more than sufficient to power a civilisation. The amount of infrastructure and the areas needed to harness this power are also well within the bounds of feasibility. As this post is too long I will post again on the feasibility of harvesting industrial quantities of solar and wind power.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I hope you are right about wind/sun. It would be very nice for my grandchildren to have some electricity. I just have a hard time seeing how anything large will get built without diesel and credit.
I will try to keep an open mind to possible positive outcomes in some areas of the world. I feel very fortunate to live on the west coast of Canada. There is no where I would rather be.
Ikonoclast, Great analyses. All true – except #20
There will be no global emergency priority. It will be fossil fuel funded BAU all the way down the slippery slope of energy descent.
And even IF there were a global energy priority, it’s too late to convert our 13 TW of energy to renewables in any reasonable time frame (+ or – 50 yrs, even 100).
And even IF we could convert our power supplies to renewables in the very short 50 to 100 yr timeframe, then the lower net energy of renewables will guarantee a lower net energy future.
Lower Net Energy in the future is Guaranteed. Just how low? Your great grandchildren will find out.
And as for the nuclear option, even without Fukushima, we need 1 new nuclear power station a week, every week, for 50 years (2,500 nukes) just to replace the lost energy in dwindling oil supplies. Now really?
And as for Fukushima, there will still be melted fuel, highly lethal, melting a hole through central Honshu when your great grandchildren are living on energy levels last seen in the late 19th century. IMO
As much a layperson reasonably can (I am not a physics graduate), I have investigated world energy issues. For anyone who accepts scientific empiricism as their guiding method for investigation of the physical world, the following conclusions are inescapable;
1. The earth is finite. (An empirical fact that Gail’s site takes not only in name but also as the starting principle for any chain of logical deduction about resource issues.)
2. The earth provides many material resources and one special category resource, energy.
3. All resources are either stock resources or flow resources.
4. Of stock resources, there is a finite stock. Of flow resources, there is a finite maximum flow.
5. In thermodynamic terms, the earth is defined formally as a closed system. This means matter cannot enter or leave the system (except in very minor ways) but energy can enter and leave the system.
6. Energy mainly enters the earth system as solar radiation and exits as reflected radiation or black body radiation.
7. All material resources on earth (even those used to liberate energy eg coal and oxygen or uranium in fission) are finite stocks.
8. The main resource which is an exogenous flow, is incoming solar radiation (called insolation) and its secondary energy effects like winds and waves.
9. The kinetic or orbital energy of the moon is the only other significant source of exogenous energy for the earth and it is manifested in the tides from which energy can also be harvested.
10. Energy can be regarded as the special or master resource because it is the one resource ALWAYS needed to utilise any other resource. This can be said of no other resource, not even water.
11. Many material resource shortages (including fresh water shortages) can be compensated for or partially overcome if sufficient cheap and easily harnessable energy is available (for example in solar desalination).
12. Any increase in human bodies, human structures and human civilization entails an increase in complexity.
13. All processes which create increased complexity require the input of energy as useful work.
14. For reasons 10 to 13 above, we can correctly deduce that energy is the master and key resource for human civilizational survival.
15. By reason of the finite nature of earth’s stock resources we can deduce that all material stock resources available on earth for energy generation (coal, gas, oil and uranium) will be substantially depleted in a finite time.
16. Due to the one way nature of entropic processes, this is a once-only process and no material stock resources will remain on earth for substantial energy generation.
17. Therefore, the flow of solar energy (as insolation), its secondary energy effects as wind and waves and the secondary effect of the moon’s orbital energy as tides will be the only sources of energy for man and civilization in the long run.
18. Most analyses of material stock resources used for energy production indicate that all (oil, gas, coal, fissile materials) will reach or have reached 50% depletion and thus peak production in the period 2000 to 2020.
19. Thus all energy sources other than renewables WILL fail and ARE failing now in the period 2000 to 2020.
20. Therefore our ONLY hope to save all or part of civilisation is to develop renewables NOW as a matter of GLOBAL EMERGENCY priority.
The logic of the above 20 points is scientifically irrefutable. Anyone who denies them is scientifically illiterate or lacks the courage and mental application needed to make the clear logical deductions which flow from scientific literacy.
I agree with you with two exceptions
1) The time scale for the depletion of Uranium and Thorium. I agree high quality and cheap Uranium ore is peaking or peaked but as with oil I am guessing (this is not a subject I have studied) there is still a lot of expensive Uranium. On Thorium I have studied this a bit there is many hundreds of years of Thorium available. Yes only one prototype Thorium reactor was ever built by Oak Ridge National Labs. The Chinese are currently building a proof of concept Thorium reactor now.
2) The Earth is heated by radioactive decay. The Earth a few kilometers down is hot. It could be used to drive heat engines. Potter Drilling is developing a cheaper deep drilling technology. http://www.potterdrilling.com/ If they are successful this may become a large scale source of energy for human society with a life span of millions (billions?) of years.
Gail, I agree the time scales may not match up. That is we may crash before new technologies are developed and deployed. Even so, after the fail we will continue development and deployment. Yes, it may be super slow compared to what we can do today but it will continue because the pentagon still want to wage war and energy is needed to wage war, because corporations still want to make money and energy is needed to make money, because individuals still want to be warm in the winter and energy is needed to stay warm (at least here in the freezing north).
On #20 I expect to see progress due to US military priority. Whatever it takes to keep the war fighting systems running will be done. This may in the long run have positive spin-off effects for the world at large.
Ehhh… Just to be clear: what I wonder is if there is some stored uranium in Kazakhstan, and that uranium would probably have come from Kazakhstan AND other places in the Soviet Union.
A Russian spoke me once about the soviet-era secret towns in Kazakhstan, which hosted many military facilities for nuclear experimentation during Cold War. I’ve always wondered since if the spectacular ramp in uranium production in that ex-soviet republic was in fact due to a recurrent draw from secondary resources. The point is relevant because if the answer is yes 1) the draw will be short-lived and 2) secondary resources do not experience peaks but cliffs. Still wonder…
It is hard to imagine that there would be more than a small amount of previously mined uranium already available. They may have known were it was, and have started mines earlier. It is probably late now to look at Google maps, to see what evidence it shows. If there were huge mounds that are now being depleted, it seems like there would be some evidence.
I’m not talking about uranium being mined there, but stored there (the secret cities were settled at isolated, “expendable” locations). Otherwise stated, it is hard to imagine that Kazakhstan uranium resources were significantly less exploited by the Soviet Union than other resources elsewhere in the USSR, to the point that the production in Kazakhstan has experienced such sharp increases during the last few years. Of course technology can explain an increase, but why technology is not driving similar relative increases at other locations in the other ex-soviet republics? Maybe I am wrong, but with the incomplete data I have this sounds a bit suspect; this is why I ask you for more insight on the question.
Thanks for your time and patience 😉
That is an interesting idea. It still seems like google maps would be the way to tell a little better what is going on. If they have maps of that part of the world, it would be possible to see how much of the area is being mined, and whether that stacks up with sales reports. I know some people have tried that approach to see what Saudi Arabia is doing. I haven’t done it myself, though.
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And yet, the hidden costs escalate.
Since Fukushima lit off, it was reported that the infant death statistics in several North American have increased markedly. Of course, industry apologists immediately attacked the studies as flawed.
And yet, today, the province of British Columbia announced that infant deaths throughout the province for 2011 have already surpassed all of 2010, and could double previous records by years’ end.
What are we doing to ourselves?
Please can you point me to a reference on the BC infant death rate announcement. Thank you.
Thanks for the update. You frequently comment on the receding horizon of non-fossil energy but did not mention it here. I often wonder how dependent nuclear is on oil for uranium mining, processing and transportation, plant construction, plant operation, and credit to build the thing in the first place. Not sure nuclear will be economically viable in a declining oil environment. Not sure we want it to be viable because declining oil means we will be poor and getting poorer which is not conducive to effective safety policies and practices.
“…declining oil means we will be poor and getting poorer which is not conducive to effective safety policies and practices.”
Exactly. There is currently an effort to shift some of the blame for the disaster at Fukushima to operator error – as if that somehow helps exonerate the basic idea of fission. But it is exactly the problem of operator error, both in the classic sense and in the sense of intentional misuse, that makes fission, even under the best circumstances, a mad engineer’s foolish dream. Under the worst of circumstances – and the impending impoverization of the world is among the worst of circumstances – we can expect operator error to grow significantly.
Nuclear is probably a useful, if somewhat minor, aid to making a successful transition to a self-sustaining economy – if that goal is broadly pursued – but it is an aid that should be abandoned with all possible speed.