Start thinking Atomic

[Mega]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...LXrcxixE&pos=5

Factor in the new plants in India & UK & you start to see a VERY real demand for firms like Cameco.

Mike

[Rajiv]

Re: Start thinking Atomic

Mega,

Take some time reading this thread from 2007 -- should be enlightening.

Warning: The mining boom is fading fast

[Rajiv]

Re: Start thinking Atomic

Two 2008 links to the cost of uranium

Nuclear's CO2 cost 'will climb'

The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.

It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium - on which nuclear power relies - are on the rise.

Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

A significant proportion of greenhouse emissions from nuclear power stem from the fuel supply stage, which includes uranium mining, milling, enrichment and fuel manufacturing.

Others sources of carbon include construction of the plant - including the manufacturing of steel and concrete materials - and decomissioning.

The authors based their analysis on historical records, contemporary financial and technical reports, and analyses of CO2 emissions.
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and the article - Sustainability of Uranium Mining and Milling: Toward Quantifying Resources and Eco-Efficiency

The mining of uranium has long been a controversial public issue, and a renewed debate has emerged on the potential for nuclear power to help mitigate against climate change. The central thesis of pro-nuclear advocates is the lower carbon intensity of nuclear energy compared to fossil fuels, although there remains very little detailed analysis of the true carbon costs of nuclear energy. In this paper, we compile and analyze a range of data on uranium mining and milling, including uranium resources as well as sustainability metrics such as energy and water consumption and carbon emissions with respect to uranium productionsarguably the first time for modern projects. The extent of economically recoverable uranium resources is clearly linked to exploration, technology, and economics but also inextricably to environmental costs such as energy/water/chemicals consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and social issues. Overall, the data clearly show the sensitivity of sustainability assessments to the ore grade of the uranium deposit being mined and that significant gaps remain in complete sustainability reporting and accounting. This paper is a case study of the energy, water, and carbon costs of uranium mining and milling within the context of the nuclear energy chain.

Also Sustainable uranium mining: Grappling with the new realities

Nuclear power is hot. Advocates of nuclear energy promote its low carbon cost as the way to reconcile surging global energy needs with the challenges of climate change. But something often gets lost in the discussion of the environmental superiority of nuclear energy over fossil fuels: questions about the sustainability of uranium mines.

According to the World Nuclear Organization's March 2008 statistics, China is constructing six nuclear reactors and has 86 more on the drawing board. In order to fuel these plants, China needs 1,396 tonnes of uranium this year, which is only slightly lower than Canada's requirements of 1,665 tonnes. India wants to more than double the number of its reactors and needs 978 tonnes of uranium to operate its existing 17 reactors. France will be using 10,527 tonnes of uranium in 2008 in its 59 nuclear reactors. Cameco Corporation, which accounts for 20% of world uranium production, estimates an increase in net generating capacity of about 21% by 2016.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gavin Mudd of the Institute for Sustainable Water Resources at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, argues that a significant amount of the GHG emissions for nuclear power comes from uranium mining and milling. And that only limited information on emissions has been reported by mining companies.

Mudd's 2007 paper, "Sustainability Aspects of Uranium Mining: Towards Accurate Accounting," published in a recent issue of Environmental Science and Technology, was, he says, the first analysis of environmental sustainability in modern uranium mines. "There has never been an analysis that I have found that has used actual, reported data for different uranium mines," says Mudd. "It's always been assumed that the energy costs coming from the mining side are pretty low, relative to those coming from say the production of nuclear power. Also, people didn't realize that the data was available. Now that companies are releasing sustainability reports, a lot of that data is in there."

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[Rajiv]

Re: Start thinking Atomic

Also - Peak Uranium: More Reasons to Worry About Powering the Nuclear Revival

Is it time to start worrying (again) about “peak uranium”?

Every so often, the world’s planned nuclear renaissance runs into concerns about future availablity of the main fuel source for all those reactors.

A few news items this week fuel those concerns. Chinese officials acknowledge that their planned nuclear push could strain uranium supplies in the future—especially since Chinese uranium production seems well below domestic needs already. And India’s existing nuclear fleet is running well below capacity because of shortages of domestic uranium. India has also planned a massive nuclear-energy expansion. All that has Russia eager, as always, to step into the breach with offers to supply uranium to potential new customers.

The fears over “peak uranium” boil down to simple math: The world presently consumes a lot more uranium than it produces. The latest numbers from the International Atomic Energy Agency say global annual consumption is 69,100 tons; global production from mining is around 43,000 tons. The difference—for now—is basically made up from nuclear-weapons stockpiles, which obviously aren’t an infinite resource.

That’s the arithmetic that has renewed “peak uranium” chatter in recent weeks. Swiss scientist Michael Dittmar talks of a supply crunch as soon as 2013. And all those worries are based on the size of the world’s current nuclear power fleet.

The thing is, China, India, the Middle East, and the U.K. are already ramping up their own nuclear renaissance. The U.S.—the world’s biggest user of nuclear energy—has plans for more, though perhaps not as much as Republicans would like. Either way, nuclear expansion on the drawing board seems likely to increase the world’s appetite for uranium.
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Also see - Do we have enough uranium for the proposed nuclearization of energy sources?

“Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

— Peter Bradford, former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member

Like coal, natural gas, and oil, uranium is a nonrenewable resource. Consequently, is uranium being depleted faster than we think? With all the talk of building and investing in so-called next generation nuclear reactors, is enough uranium available to meet this proposed new demand in addition to sustaining current demand? Some U.S. Senators are proposing that more nuclear energy is the answer to address our climate change and energy troubles.

U.S. Senators Jim Webb, a democrat from Virginia, and Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, do not support the current cap-and-trade legislation, but these Senators are throwing their support behind nuclear power and carbon-capture-and-storage technology. Furthermore, “Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is working with Democrat John Kerry on the bill, highlighted how France now derives 80 percent of its energy from nuclear power and is presently constructing a next-generation reactor, said to be the most advanced in the world.” More on dwindling uranium supplies from the Physics arXiv Blog:

The world is about to enter a period of unprecedented investment in nuclear power. The combined threats of climate change, energy security and fears over the high prices and dwindling reserves of oil are forcing governments towards the nuclear option. The perception is that nuclear power is a carbon-free technology, that it breaks our reliance on oil and that it gives governments control over their own energy supply.

That looks dangerously overoptimistic, says Michael Dittmar, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who publishes the final chapter of an impressive four-part analysis of the global nuclear industry on the arXiv today.

Perhaps the most worrying problem is the misconception that uranium is plentiful. The world’s nuclear plants today eat through some 65,000 tons of uranium each year. Of this, the mining industry supplies about 40,000 tons. The rest comes from secondary sources such as civilian and military stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium. “But without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013, concludes Dittmar.

It’s not clear how the shortfall can be made up since nobody seems to know where the mining industry can look for more.

That means countries that rely on uranium imports such as Japan and many western countries will face uranium .shortages, possibly as soon as 2013. Far from being the secure source of energy that many governments are basing their future energy needs on, nuclear power looks decidedly rickety.

And from PhysOrg.com:
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