The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part II: What is known about Secondary Uranium Resources?
Posted by Francois Cellier on August 19, 2009 - 10:28am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: fossil fuel depletion, michael dittmar, nuclear energy, nuclear fission, secondary uranium resources, uranium [list all tags]
This is the second part of a four-part guest post by Dr. Michael Dittmar. Dr. Dittmar is a researcher with the Institute of Particle Physics of ETH Zurich, and he also works at CERN in Geneva.
During 2009, nuclear power plants, with a capacity of 370 GWe, will produce roughly 14% of the world-wide electric energy. About 65,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent are required to operate these reactors. For the last 15 years, only 2/3 of this fuel has on average been provided by uranium mines, whereas 1/3 has come from secondary resources. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the secondary uranium resources will be essentially exhausted during the next 5-10 years. In this paper, the situation concerning the secondary resources at the beginning of the year 2009 is presented. The data used are from the IAEA/NEA 2007 Red Book, "Uranium Resources, Production and Demand," and from the World Nuclear Association (WNA).
Our analysis shows that, at the beginning of 2009, the remaining world-wide civilian uranium stocks amount to roughly 50,000 tons. With the almost inevitable yearly draw-down of 10,000 tons, these civilian stocks will be essentially exhausted within the next 5 years. This coincides roughly with the year 2013, when the annual delivery of 10,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent from Russian military stocks to the USA will end. As the majority of the remaining civilian stocks, about 30,000 tons, are believed to be under the control of the US government and American companies, it seems rather unlikely that the USA will share their own strategic uranium reserves with other large nuclear energy users. In summary, all data indicate that a uranium supply shortage in many OECD countries can only be avoided, if the remaining military uranium stocks from Russia and the USA, estimated to be roughly 500,000 tons, are made available to the other countries.
(Link to 1st part)
Introduction
In part I of this analysis, we have described the world-wide situation of nuclear energy production, the status of uranium mining, and the near future perspectives and limits. In this part, we quantify the situation concerning secondary uranium resources, which have provided for the past 10-15 years the fuel for about 1/3 of the world’s nuclear reactors. The current nuclear fuel situation is, according to official documents from the IAEA and the NEA, totally unsustainable, and the existing secondary resources are expected to be exhausted within the next few years. The seriousness of this situation, largely ignored by the media, has been expressed in the IAEA and NEA press declaration of June 3, 2008, launching the 2007 edition of the Red Book [1], [2]:
"Most secondary resources are now in decline and the gap will increasingly need to be closed by new production. Given the long lead time typically required to bring new resources into production, uranium supply shortfalls could develop if production facilities are not implemented in a timely manner."
In order to clarify the importance of the secondary uranium resources, some facts about nuclear fission energy are summarized below [3]:
- Commercial nuclear reactors are operated in 31 out of the 200 countries on our planet. In 2009, 436 nuclear power plants, with a net installed capacity of 370.2 GW electric power, are in operation. These reactors provide about 14% of the electric energy produced world-wide.
- During the past 5-10 years, nuclear power capacity remained essentially unchanged, as the capacity increase from new reactors was compensated for by the shut-down of many old reactors. In contrast to a claimed "nuclear renaissance," 2008 was the first year since at least 40 years, when not even one new reactor was connected to the electric grid.
- The absolute world-wide production of electric energy from nuclear fission has, according to the WNA data base, reached a "peak" in 2006, when 2658 TWhe were produced. This amount can be compared with the years 2005, 2007, and 2008 when, 2626 TWhe, 2608 TWhe, and 2601 TWhe were generated, respectively [3].
- The world-wide reactor requirements for the two fissionable isotopes U235 and Pu239, expressed in terms of natural uranium equivalent, are currently 65,000 tons, or about 170 tons/GWe, per year. For more than 10 years now, the primary uranium supply from world-wide mining has provided only about 2/3 of the requirements, whereas 1/3 stems from the draw-down of secondary sources, a huge amount corresponding to almost the total uranium extracted by the three largest uranium producing countries, Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan, together.
- Out of the 31 countries operating nuclear power plants in 2006, only Canada, South-Africa, and Russia were uranium self-sufficient. The other countries use a mixture of uranium imports and previously accumulated uranium stocks.
- Nuclear power plants in Japan, South-Korea, and the Western European countries, which have little or no uranium mining and have little or no civilian and military uranium stocks, are particularly vulnerable to uranium supply shortages.
- About 48 reactors are under construction today, and up to 60 reactors are in a discussion and planning state. If one assumes that all of the 48 reactors under construction can be completed in time, between 5-10 GWe/year should become operational during the next 5-10 years. These reactors would require roughly 500 tons of natural uranium per GWe for the first load and 170 tons/year during the following years. About 5000 tons/year of uranium will thus be required on average for their startup and operation. If one assumes that the 100 oldest nuclear reactors are not shut down, the yearly uranium demand will increase from 65,000 tons in 2008 to about 90,000 tons by 2015.
In the following, we shall analyze the status and prospects for the possible contribution from secondary uranium resources using the data from the IAEA/NEA Red Book 2007 edition and from WNA information papers. First, we present the current composition of the secondary resources by using publicly available information about past uranium extraction, and we determine the 2009 status of uranium stocks. Then, we combine the information from the secondary supplies with the mining expectations and make a quantitative prediction for the uranium supply situation and its consequences for nuclear power plants during the next 5 years.
The composition of secondary uranium resources
As explained above, secondary uranium resources provide the fuel for about 1/3 of the world’s nuclear fission power plants. These secondary uranium resources are classified as follows:
- nuclear fuel produced from reprocessing of reactor fuels and from surplus military plutonium;
- U235 produced by re-enrichment of previously depleted U235 uranium tails; and
- civilian and military stocks of natural uranium, weapon-grade enriched uranium, and Pu239, accumulated during excess mining operations in the past 50 years.
According to the Red Book, about 3500 tons (5% of world-wide demand) stem from reprocessing and from depleted uranium tails. An expansion of such production facilities would, like other big nuclear power projects, require at least 5-10 years. Such an expansion is currently not planned.
Pu239/U235 from the reprocessing of used fuel rods
In order to operate a standard nuclear reactor, the nuclear fuel U235 (or Pu239) has to be enriched to a concentration well above the concentration of 0.71% found in natural uranium. New U235 enriched nuclear fuel rods contain a fraction of about 4% of the fissionable U235 isotope and 96% of U238. During the reactor operation, the U235 concentration will be reduced down to roughly 1%. At the same time, Pu239 builds up to an equilibrium concentration of about 1%. The Pu239 is formed by neutron capture of U238 isotopes and subsequent nuclear β decays. During the normal reactor cycle, the Pu239 component contributes up to 30% of the produced fission energy. After a few years of operation, the fissionable material has been reduced to about 2%, and some new fuel is usually introduced. Consequently, the used fuel rods still contain an interesting amount of fissionable material of U235 and Pu239. However, nuclear fuel recycling is a rather delicate and costly operation, as the fuel rods contain a large number of different radioactive elements. Another problem with this recycling is related to the military use of the Pu239 component. In the past, up to 95% of the extracted Pu239 was used for military purposes, where extraction costs and associated risks were considered less of an obstacle. Besides the huge cost, the potential military use of Pu239 limits the world-wide enthusiasm for nuclear fuel recycling.
However, at least some of the extracted Pu239 is used to produce the so-called "MOX" reactor fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides [4]. Even though most current reactors could in principle be operated with MOX fuel, only 8% of the world-wide reactors are currently licensed to use this fuel. For example, the Euratom Supply Agency (ESA) reported that, within the EU-15 countries, reprocessing has produced a total of 95.8 tons of Pu239 since 1996. This amount corresponds to an equivalent of 11,515 tons of natural uranium. The ESA reports that the natural uranium requirements of the EU-15 reactors have been reduced in 2006 by 1225 tons, corresponding to about 5% of total fuel use, with this MOX fuel [5].
According to the Red Book, acknowledging that not all countries have reported their data, the world-wide capacity of Pu239 recycling is about 2500 tons/year of natural uranium equivalent.
Another source of "MOX" fuel, following an agreement in September 2000 between the USA and Russia, comes from military Pu239 stocks. Both countries agreed to convert 34 tons each at a rate of at least 2 tons per year. During the lifetime of this agreement, this contribution adds a natural uranium equivalent of roughly 600 tons to the secondary resources.
The used fuel rods also contain about 1% of U235. This uranium can be partly recovered as reprocessed uranium (or RepU). According to the 2007 Red Book, RepU processing is very costly and is currently done by France and Russia only. The yearly production capacity is estimated to be up to 2500 tons, but only 600 tons/year are currently being produced [6].
U235 from depleted tails
Depleted uranium tails are a by-product of the U235 enrichment process. The tails contain normally between 0.25-0.35% of U235, or about one third of the 0.71% contained in natural uranium. The inventory of depleted uranium is increasing every year by roughly 60,000 tons. It is estimated that roughly 1,800,000 tons have been accumulated in different countries by the end of 2008. In theory, a large amount of U235 is still contained in these tails, but the existing enrichment capacity is already rather limited. Nevertheless during the years 2001 to 2006, Russia delivered yearly up to about 1000 tons of re-enriched uranium to the European Union. According to the Red Book, the Russian Federation indicated that this delivery will be stopped once the existing contracts end. For the USA, a pilot project is anticipated to produce a maximum of 1900 tons of natural uranium equivalent during a period of two years. No additional information about the status of this or other world-wide projects is given in the Red Book.
Past uranium extraction and how it was used
In order to understand the uranium supply situation during the coming years, we need to know:
- how much uranium has been extracted in the past;
- how much of it has already been used up in reactors;
- the geographical distribution of these stocks; and
- how much of this excess capacity exists in civilian and in military stockpiles.
Partial answers to these questions can be obtained from different editions of the Red Book and from the WNA. Unfortunately, these presumably very precise numbers often do not agree with each other. For example in the Red Book 2007 edition, one finds two precise, but inconsistent, numbers for the amount of extracted uranium. The uranium mined up to the end of 2006 is given as 2,234,083 tons in chapter 1c (Table 19, page 39) and as 2,325,000 tons in chapter 2c (page 74), about 90,000 tons higher. A comparison with previous Red Book editions and the uranium mining results from 2005 and 2006 resolves the discrepancy in favor of the higher number. Unfortunately, such inconsistencies in the Red Book do not strengthen the confidence in the claimed accuracy for many other uranium numbers.
Next, we need to know how much of this uranium has been used up (fissioned) so far. According to the 2007 Red Book (chapter 2c), a total of 1,700,000 tons of uranium have been used up in reactors until the end of 2006. Thus, the total remaining stocks at the end of the year 2006 were 625,000 tons. During 2007 and 2008, the world’s uranium mines produced 41,264 tons and 43,853 tons, respectively. Another roughly 7000 tons (3500 tons/year) came from recycling and reprocessing of depleted uranium tails. With reactor requirements of 65,000 tons/year, we find that the stocks have been reduced by roughly 40,000 tons. Out of this, roughly 20,000 tons came from the draw-down of Russian military stocks and another 20,000 tons from the draw-down of the remaining civilian stocks. Following this estimate, we find that, at the end of the year 2008, about 587,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent remain in the combined military and civilian stocks.
In order to understand the supply situation from these secondary resources during the next few years, it is important to know that the yearly delivery of 10,000 tons of uranium from the Russian military stocks will end in 2013. The future of the secondary uranium supply depends thus mainly on the size of the remaining civilian uranium reserves. Unfortunately, only a few countries have provided this information for the Red Book 2007 edition, but at least 43,844 tons (end of 2006) were attributed to civilian stocks. The majority of this amount, 41,279 tons, is assigned to the civilian stocks of the USA [7]. It is further specified that roughly one half of these stocks, or 17,796 tons, are owned by the US government, and that this amount is reserved to guarantee uranium supplies for their own reactors for two years. Assuming that the yearly draw-down of civilian stocks has continued during the past two years, we can expect that the stocks in the USA have been reduced to an amount of 25,000-30,000 tons. However, it is possible that this reduction was somewhat smaller as, unknown to the author, some contribution might have come from a conversion of military stocks of the USA.
Slightly more accurate numbers can be obtained, if we combine the well documented uranium data of the past eight years with those presented at the 2001 annual symposium of the World Nuclear Association [8]. In this document, the uranium associated to the civilian and military stocks of the Western and Eastern blocks has been estimated. The WNA analysis indicated that the civilian stocks at end of the year 2000 consisted of about 140,000 tons, out of which 117,000 tons should be associated with the Western block.
The WNA analysis started from a total of 1,999,000 tons of extracted uranium up to the end of the year 2000. This number is about 3% larger than the corresponding number of 1,938,000 tons given in the 2003 Red Book. The total reactor requirements up to the year 2000 were given as 1,138,000 tons, which is about 170,000 tons smaller than the amount that can be calculated from the 2007 Red Book estimate. The discrepancy between these two numbers might be understood from a different accounting of the remaining, not yet used, fissionable material in the reactors. The first uranium load requirement for a 1 GWe reactor is about 500 tons, but only about 170 tons are used and exchanged every year. Accordingly, one finds that the not yet used fuel within all existing 370 GWe reactor cores corresponds to an equivalent of up to 185,000 tons, in good agreement with the above discrepancy of 170,000 tons. In absence of a better number, we will thus use the 2007 Red Book number for the reactor used uranium and assume that the civilian uranium stocks at the end of the year 2000 were 140,000 tons.
During the past eight years, world uranium stocks have been reduced by about 170,000 tons, or about 21,000 tons annually. While about 80,000 tons came from a reduction of Russian military stocks, it can be assumed that the other 90,000 tons came mostly from Western civilian stocks.
It thus seems reasonable to estimate that, at the end of 2008, only 50,000 tons of civilian uranium stocks remain; out of these, about 27,000 tons are being controlled by the USA, whereas the remaining 23,000 tons are being controlled by Russia. If one subtracts this number from the total remaining stocks, the military stockpiles, shared somehow between the USA and Russia, can be estimated to be roughly 540,000 tons. Our estimate for the military stocks is at least 10% smaller than the amount that we would calculate from an update of the 2000 WNA estimates alone. If we assume that the percentage-wise distribution between the Eastern and Western military stockpiles from the year 2001 WNA analysis were roughly correct, the military stocks at the end of 2008 can be estimated. Taking into account that the Russian reserves have been reduced by about 80,000 tons and assuming that the military reserves are shared mainly between the USA and Russia, we can estimate their stocks at the beginning of 2009 to be 230,000 tons and 310,000 tons, respectively.
The above approximate numbers, as summarized in Table 1, indicate that the civilian uranium reserves, at the end of 2008, consist of roughly 50,000 tons. Furthermore, one finds that about 27,000 tons and 23,000 tons remain in the Western and Eastern civilian stockpiles, respectively. The military stocks can be estimated to be about 10 times larger and consist of roughly 540,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent.
Table 1: State of the uranium extraction and use up to the end of 2008, as estimated from the 2007 Red Book and WNA numbers for the years 2007 and 2008. Roughly 3500 tons/year of natural uranium equivalent is estimated to come from world-wide reprocessing, and this amount is subtracted from the yearly requirements of 2007 and 2008. Taking into account that not all countries have reported accurate data to the Red Book and that some inconsistencies in the accounting exists, the civilian and military reserves contain perhaps an uncertainty of up to ±10%. The Eastern and Western stocks are believed to be controlled almost entirely by Russia and the USA.
The military uranium stockpiles
As described in the previous section, roughly 540,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent can be associated with the military reserves of the USA and Russia. Not all details about these military stockpiles are public, but some numbers relevant for the possible conversion of these stocks into reactor fuel can nevertheless be estimated.
Data from nuclear arms negotiations between the USA and Russia and other countries indicate that these two countries control currently roughly equal shares and a total of about 95% of all existing nuclear weapons [9]. For the following, it seems to be sufficient to only consider the military stocks of these two countries.
First, we estimate how much of these 540,000 tons of uranium is blocked in the remaining 20,000 nuclear warheads. It is known that the Hiroshima bomb was made of about 64 kg of uranium, with a U235 content of 51 kg (enrichment of 80%). This corresponds roughly to the critical mass, the amount required to start the uncontrolled chain reaction in a sphere of uncompressed bare metal of U235. Sophisticated methods for the uranium storage and controlled compression have reduced the critical mass by a factor of 2-3. In any case, the danger of uncontrolled explosions limits the amount of the U235 content in the warheads. It is also known that the nuclear fission bombs of today are based on U235 or Pu239, and that fusion bombs are started with an explosion of U235 or Pu239. On average, the nuclear weapons of today are estimated to have an explosive power at least 10 times stronger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
In absence of more precise data, we may assume that each nuclear weapon contains on average just the critical mass or at least 50 kg of U235. Using this assumption, we find that the U235 of one nuclear bomb corresponds to 7 tons of natural uranium equivalent on average, and that the uranium from about 25 such bombs is sufficient to operate a 1 GWe reactor for one year. Consequently, about 140,000 tons of uranium, about 1/3 of the military stockpiles, are currently blocked directly in nuclear weapons. Another large fraction of the military stocks can be assumed to exist as highly enriched weapon-grade uranium, HEU. In order to be used as normal nuclear fuel, these stocks would have to be downgraded to reactor-ready low-enrichment uranium, LEU, with a U235 fraction of 3-4%. During the past years, a natural uranium equivalent of 10,000 tons/year has been downgraded to reactor fuel, and this number may be considered roughly equal to the currently existing downgrading capacity. On a time scale of 5-10 years, it should be possible to increase this capacity.
Theoretically and assuming a total nuclear disarmament, the military uranium stockpiles would thus be sufficient to operate the current world nuclear reactors for about 8 years or for about 25 years assuming the current draw-down of secondary resources. Taking the current world real politics into account, such a total nuclear disarmament is unfortunately not very likely.
Nevertheless, the military stockpiles are certainly large enough, even without touching the remaining 20,000 warheads, that an extension of the current policy to convert about 10,000 tons/year can be imagined. It is however not obvious that either the USA or Russia will share their strategic uranium reserves with other users of nuclear fission energy. In addition, and with a longer term perspective, the downgrading of large amounts of previously highly enriched uranium seems to be pointless, as the original enrichment process was very expensive and as the highly enriched uranium might eventually be needed directly to fuel future Generation IV fast breeder reactors.
Secondary uranium supply, the near future
All existing data indicate that draw-down of the civilian inventories, practiced during the past 10 years, has reduced the civilian uranium stocks to roughly 50,000 tons. With an expected further yearly draw-down of up to 10,000 tons and without access to the military stocks, the civilian Western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013. Furthermore, the supply situation will become even more critical as the delivery of the 10,000 tons of military uranium stocks from Russia to the USA will also end during 2013. Thus we find, in agreement with the dramatic warning from the IAEA/NEA authorities, that secondary uranium supplies will essentially come to an end within a few years.
The severity of the supply situation seems to be known and acknowledged by the Uranium (Ux) Consulting Company (UxC) and by uranium mining co-operations. For example some interesting numbers about the evolution of demand and secondary supplies and the required primary uranium mining were presented in September 2008 at the annual WNA symposium [10]. The evolution of the secondary supply side was estimated to decrease by roughly 1000 tons per year starting from 20,029 tons in 2009 and ending with 15,008 tons by 2013. For the following three years up to 2016, a further reduction of about 2000 tons per year is assumed (the numbers for the years 2014-2016 are in disagreement with the 2013 termination of the yearly delivery of 10,000 tons from Russia). The authors of this WNA study assumed that many new reactors will start up during the coming eight years, and they estimate that the uranium demand will increase from 65,000 tons in 2008 to about 85,000 tons by 2013. Some of their uranium supply and demand estimations for the coming years are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2: Forecast for the world uranium balance prediction for the years 2008-2016 according to the Macquarie Research Commodities predictions presented at the 2008 WNA annual symposium [10]. The forecast for the 2008 primary uranium number(*) was about 1200 tons larger than the now known number of 43,853 tons. The latest WNA forecast for 2009 is 49,375 tons and thus also about 1000 tons smaller [11]. The claimed accuracy for the forecast should raise some doubts about the underlying methodology to guess these numbers.
As discussed above, the uranium supply might become the limiting factor for the near future of nuclear power production. This demand depends, among other things, on the future of the aging nuclear power plants and on how rapidly the reactors that are currently under construction can be completed. If the primary fuel supply cannot be increased as quickly as required, some interesting world-wide decisions about the future of nuclear power can be expected. For example, one needs to weigh the stable operation of older nuclear power plants, which require 170 tons/GWe/year, against the stability of early operations for new reactors that have a first load requirement of 500 tons/GWe. Of course, the situation will be further complicated by national and regional interests. It is difficult to imagine that the US government will sell their strategic uranium reserves to their economic competitors in Japan, China or Western Europe.
In absence of such political insights, one can nevertheless try to guess how much uranium fuel will come from different sources, and how many existing and new nuclear power plants can be operated with this fuel during the coming years. For this forecast, we make use of the uranium supply information presented in parts I and II of this document and assume that the demand will be limited by the possible supply. This "upper" limit guess is calculated on the basis that 170 tons/GWe/year are required to fuel an already operational reactor, and that 500 tons/GWe are needed for the first reactor load. This forecast is presented in Table 3 and can be compared with the one from Table 2. The main difference comes from the mining forecast and the assumption that the military component of the secondary supply from Russia will terminate by the end of 2013. Obviously the two scenarios should be checked and corrected for the real mining results during the coming years. Interested readers should fill Table 3 with their own favorite nuclear energy scenario under the constraint that it be consistent with their future secondary and primary uranium supply estimates.
Table 3: The author’s upper limit forecast covering the years 2009-2018 for the world-wide natural uranium equivalent primary and secondary fuel supply and its consequences for nuclear fission produced electric energy in TWhe. This fuel-based scenario assumes that world-wide uranium mining cannot be increased as estimated by the IAEA/NEA and WNA. The result of this scenario will be a slow, about 1% annual, reduction of nuclear produced electric energy up to 2013. The decline will become much stronger after 2013, if military stocks will not add at least 10,000 tons annually to the fuel market.
Both scenarios obviously contain some guesswork, and many political and economic decisions during a world-wide economic crisis can change the near future of uranium mining and the evolution of the nuclear disarmament. Especially critical for uranium mining will be the situation in Kazakhstan, where the current optimistic forecast expects that by 2013 the existing and new mines will increase the uranium output from 8500 tons (2008) to about 18,000 tons annually. An increase of similar size is also hoped to come from the mines in Niger, Namibia, and South Africa [10].
In conclusion, uranium shortages and thus reactor shutdowns can be avoided only if world-wide uranium mining can be increased by roughly 10% or about 5000 tons each year. While such an increase looks rather unlikely for the next few years, the presented numbers for the required primary uranium in 2008 and the obtained results show a shortage of about 1200 tons indicating that up to 1400 tons will be missing already in 2009. This amount corresponds roughly to the reduction of the uranium requirements that followed the 2007 earthquake in Japan with an 8 GWe nuclear capacity outage.
We expect that the uranium supply situation will become especially critical for those countries where a large fraction of the electric energy comes from nuclear power and that important essentially 100% of their uranium needs. This supply problem will especially affect OECD countries in Western Europe and Japan. One might hope that discussions about new nuclear power plants will consider the warning from the NEA/IAEA press declaration about the Red Book 2007 edition expressed in the following paragraph:
"At the end of 2006, world uranium production (39,603 tons) provided about 60% of world reactor requirements (66,500 tons) for the 435 commercial nuclear reactors in operation. The gap between production and requirements was made up by secondary sources drawn from government and commercial inventories (such as the dismantling of over 12,000 nuclear warheads and the re-enrichment of uranium tails). Most secondary resources are now in decline and the gap will increasingly need to be closed by new production. Given the long lead time typically required to bring new resources into production, uranium supply shortfalls could develop if production facilities are not implemented in a timely manner."
References
[1] The detailed numbers are extracted from the Red Book 2007 edition, "Uranium 2007 Resources, Production and Demand." The book is published every two years by the IAEA/NEA and can be found at the OECD bookshop http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?K=5KZLLSXQS6ZV&DS=Uranium-2007. Free online versions of some past editions can be found via Google books.
[2] Nuclear Energy Agency press declaration from 3 June 2008 about the new edition of the Red Book 2007 "Uranium 2007 Resources, Production and Demand" at http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html.
[3] For the year 2008 status and production of nuclear electric energy, cf. for example the WNA papers at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf01.html, and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nshare.html.
[4] For some details about MOX reactor fuel and further references, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX fuel.
[5] Cf. the EURATOM supply agency report 2006, page 24 at http://ec.europa.eu/euratom/ar/ar2006.pdf.
[6] Cf. reference [1], page 80.
[7] Cf. reference [1], page 367.
[8] Cf. the presentation of Bernard Del Frari The Global Nuclear Fuel Market Supply and Demand 2001-2020 at the 2001 WNA symposium http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/01idx.htm.
[9] For an overview of the nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon states, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons.
[10] Cf. the presentation of Maximilian Layton, Macquarie Capital Securities "The global uranium outlook: is 2008/09 a buying opportunity?" at the 2008 WNA symposium http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2008/presentations/laytonpresentation.pdf.
[11] Cf. the July 2009 version of http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html.
Uranium mining activity has been depressed because of the conversion of stockpiles of fissionables from weapons use to energy production. This means that some of the historic mining activity is finally being realized as electric generation, but like the combustion of coal laid down 500 million years ago this won't go on for long. As the fuel requirements of new and existing plants can no longer be met by existing mines plus "secondary resources", orders for fuel can only be met by new mining activity (and ramped-up enrichment, for LWRs). The USA already has an excess of enrichment capacity, so mining is the only significant thing left.
US mining could be stepped up rapidly if demand justified it. The EIA states:If the existing mines and mills are still idle, it is proof positive that their output is not yet needed to meet projected demand. It appears that demand has already more than doubled US uranium production over the lull in 2003.
Given the rapid recovery of uranium via in-situ leaching (the majority of the resource recovered within 6 months), the major items remaining on the time-line are
- negotiations of mineral rights and mining permits,
- (mining, dealt with)
- extraction from ion-exchange media,
- conversion to UF6,
- enrichment,
- conversion to UO2, and
- assembly into fuel rods.
The enterprises in the nuclear fuel business have been doing this for decades, and it is stretching credulity to claim that they're going to be a major stumbling block in the startup of the new generation of nuclear powerplants.Dear anonymous Engineer-Poet,
perhaps you have noticed that the content of this article
(and the previous one) are not about the claimed to exist long term uranium resources
(if you can wait for some 2-3 weeks I will comment on that).
Thus please try to stay within the context of the secondary resources
and or on the combined consequences for the near future of nuclear fission energy
of the hard numbers presented in I+II combined.
And just in case, neither thorium not fast breeders are relevant in this context
either (please wait for number IV).
Thus for your comment about the USA potential capacity and what is really extracted
you might know that the 2008 results were disappointing for the US mining
1430 tons only (compared to a predicted more than 2000 tons) and the 1650 and 1670 in 2007 and 2006!
make your predictions for this 2009 year please! We can check within a few months only!
and for the
claimed (old?) capacity from the past glory when 16000 tons were mined.
Do you suggest to return to the cold war conditions to extract uranium
at no matter what condition?
Who cares about the damage from the past? I guess you live far away from those areas.
but in case,
make a trip and enjoy a visit to Arches National park. And have a careful look just outside is a huge field of
remaining waste next to the river. I saw it myself
thanks for not having to live downstream of that river after a ``century" flooding.
michael
Michael,
Why do you address EP as "Dear anonymous Engineer-Poet"? It seems a rather petty insult, insinuating that he's hiding behind anonymity. It's conventional here at TOD for posters to use handles. If you click to EP's user profile, you'll find a link to his regular blog. Lots of interesting articles there, too. But that's all BTW ...
(I think that last sentence was non-native English for "Be thankful that you don't live downstream ..")
I don't personally like the impact that any mining operation has on the environment, but let's be honest and keep things in perspective. There are three to four orders of magnitude difference between the impact of uranium mining and the impact of coal mining. And perhaps 8 orders of magnitude between the impact of uranium mining and the cumulative impact of farming, roads, and cities. I don't think any species have been driven extinct by uranium mining, and the only human deaths outside of a handful of mining accidents have been a few early cancers among mining town residents, as calculated from a "linear no-threshold" model of radiation damage that is probably wrong to begin with.
Nonetheless, I'm all for anything we can do to minimize our heavy footprint on the world. So let's reduce mining requirements by another two orders of magnitude by developing fuel cycles that achieve 100% fuel burn-up. And for the uranium mining that we have to do, let's employ the in-situ leaching methods discussed previously that have negligible surface disruption.
Let's be true environmentalists, not the willfully ignorant and innumerate hysterics that the anti-nuclear movement has nurtured.
The long cancer rates for uranium miners from the boom were startling high, and provide some basis for the LMT model.
A 30+ year old Science article rated the lung cancer rate for non-smoking miners to be = to smoking non-miners, and the lung cancer rate for smoking miners was about 8x that of either other group (smoking non-miners & non-smoking miners). This article made an impression on me back in high school.
====================
I can see a crunch coming in uranium supplies (unless Mr. Murphy takes a vacation), and some nationalistic hoarding making it worse.
Mines do *NOT* come on-line quickly and always on schedule (and leaching is, AFAIK, a slow but cheap process with low annual yields and bad effects on the watershed). Note: not an expert on leach mining.
The crunch should be resolved in a decade time frame, but this temporary shortfall will slow any new nuke building program. What will the Chinese reaction be to a brand new completed reactor without fuel ?
One response to a fuel shortage will be to derate existing nukes by using the same fuel months longer, and perhaps moving to slightly lower enriched fuel.
Alan
World-nuclear.org has this to say on the matter:
Plenty fast. The effects on groundwater depend on how much of the acid etc. is neutralized or otherwise cleaned up.
I am no chemist, but if an acid leach recovers radium along with uranium, the radium and radon content of the groundwater will be reduced immediately. In the long run, less uranium means less radium and less radon.
AlanfromBigEasy was referring to the time it takes for a mine to come on line, not for the time it takes to recover the ore, once operating.
Around here, water wells are drilled in days or hours. I'm assuming that one tube going into an aquifer is much like another.
The long cancer rates for uranium miners from the boom were startling high, and provide some basis for the LMT model.
Not true. Early miners worked in poorly ventilated mines of very high grade ore. They received radiation doses to the lungs vastly higher than the optimum dose for radiation hormesis indicated by Dr Cohen’s study.
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/category/radiation-hormesis/
http://www.radonmine.com/pdf/riskinperspective.pdf
Modern mines are well ventilated.
yes sorry about that!
But another hard fact is that I can loose patience when attacked.
Nevertheless I am more used to discuss with people who do not hide their identity.
For the impact of uranium mining (and yes essentially all other mining operations)
they are huge! In east Germany (by the communists) the Wismut Ag and during the really cold
times of the cold war extracted huge amounts of uranium and shipping it to Russia.
At least 20000 miners died of lung cancer following the poor conditions.
For the USA, Canada and Australia one finds many horror examples on how uranium mining destroyed
the living of the already poor indigenous communities. But I am drifting away also from
the topic of Chapter II of this article.
so perhaps we could try to find some agreement about the actual
situation with secondary civilian and military resources and the consequences for the next few years.
michael
How did you ever get through your PhD defense?
Anyone can make mistakes, but making many gross errors shows that your work is inadequate, to say the least. To get defensive about it is a personal failing.
You were talking about a lack of primary and secondary resources; shifting to the consequences is changing the subject.
I think you manage effectively to disqualify yourself.
probably a good thing!
michael
I am not anonymous. I am pseudonymous; this is a nom de guerre, by which I am known far and wide and have a reputation. Shall I address you as "Dear Mister Tendentious and Silly Michael Dittmar"? If that's the reputation you want, you are on your way to success.
The EIA claims excess capacity of 3.5 million pounds of yellowcake (12 million pounds capacity vs. 8.5 million pounds produced). There is obviously no difficulty meeting demand; the existing operations were only running at about 70% of capacity. Yet you see a supply crisis? The defect is in your vision.
Ah, yes, the devastating legacy of in-situ leach mining. Wellheads poking discreetly above the terrain, with wildlife oblivious to the reactions percolating below. From world-nuclear.org, which is one of your sources:
And after the mining is done and the wellheads are gone, there's... nothing.
Pseudonymous/anonymous
Now there's a distinction without a difference. Sounds like you're sorta pregnant.
So quit asking who I am. It doesn't matter anyway. Only the facts matter; if I was Albert Einstein and said "God does not play dice with the universe" I would still be wrong.
Ask yourself this:
Dittmar's conclusions are refuted by facts drawn from his own sources. That pretty much is all you need to know.
I agree with the first statements what matters is not "who" wrote it!
What matters are
1) facts
2) what do these facts indicate
As it seems you have not even looked at the facts I presented (with references)
and you do give different numbers for the
secondary resources (the topic of this paper)
perhaps you could add them in your next postings!
Michael
It would help if you become less aggressive and
discuss the points raised in my article.
For the claimed capacity of mining and the real hard number
may be you have a look at Chapter I again.
I discuss all this with references and the Red Book is very clear about that!
(but no point to discuss if you do not even look at what I wrote!)
It seems also that you do not agree with the uranium requirements
for the "first load" of a 1 GWe reactor (the 500 tons and each year 170 tons roughly.
Either you present your numbers for the requirements backed up with hard numbers
(similar for other claims)
or read the references I gave.
michael
http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/hlwaste.htm
Characteristics BWRa PWRb
Overall assembly length, m 4.470 4.059
Cross section, cm 13.9 x 13.9 21.4 x 21.4
Fuel rod length, m 4.064 3.851
Active fuel height, m 3.759 3.658
Fuel rod outer diameter, cm 1.252 0.950
Fuel rod array 8 x 8 17 x 17
Fuel rods per assembly 63 264
Assembly total weight, kg 319.9 657.9
Uranium/assembly, kg 183.3 461.4
UO2/assembly, kg 208.0 523.4
Zircaloy/assembly, kg 103.3c 108.4d
Hardware/assembly, kg 8.6e 26.1f
Total metal/assembly, kg 111.9 134.5
Nominal volume/assembly, m3 0.0864g 0.186g
PWR fuel assemblies are shipped 2 to a container (the blue cylinder to the left). For a cycle of 1 to 2 years length, 40 to 60 new fuel assemblies might be added. The fuel assemblies are unpackaged then inspected as shown in the middle picture.
Fuel Assembly details
http://www.nucleartourist.com/systems/pwrfuel1.htm
Fuel Assembly seem to be the same as fuel bundles. 121 to 193 fuel bundles are loaded into a reactor core in a PWR. so 193 times 461.4 kg of Uranium is 89 tons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel#PWR_fuel
PWR fuel
PWR fuel bundle The fuel bundle is from a pressurized water reactor of the nuclear passenger and cargo ship NS Savannah. Designed and built by the Babcock and Wilcox Company.Pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel consists of cylindrical rods put into bundles. A uranium oxide ceramic is formed into pellets and inserted into Zircaloy tubes that are bundled together. The Zircaloy tubes are about 1 cm in diameter, and the fuel cladding gap is filled with helium gas to improve the conduction of heat from the fuel to the cladding. There are about 179-264 fuel rods per fuel bundle and about 121 to 193 fuel bundles are loaded into a reactor core. Generally, the fuel bundles consist of fuel rods bundled 14x14 to 17x17. PWR fuel bundles are about 4 meters in length. In PWR fuel bundles, control rods are inserted through the top directly into the fuel bundle. The fuel bundles usually are enriched several percent in 235U. The uranium oxide is dried before inserting into the tubes to try to eliminate moisture in the ceramic fuel that can lead to corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement. The Zircaloy tubes are pressurized with helium to try to minimize pellet cladding interaction (PCI) which can lead to fuel rod failure over long periods.
BWR fuel
In boiling water reactors (BWR), the fuel is similar to PWR fuel except that the bundles are "canned"; that is, there is a thin tube surrounding each bundle. This is primarily done to prevent local density variations from effecting neutronics and thermal hydraulics of the nuclear core on a global scale. In modern BWR fuel bundles, there are either 91, 92, or 96 fuel rods per assembly depending on the manufacturer. A range between 368 assemblies for the smallest and 800 assemblies for the largest U.S. BWR forms the reactor core. Each BWR fuel rod is back filled with helium to a pressure of about three atmospheres (300 kPa).
800 assemblies X 183.3 kg is 146.6 tons for the largest BWR. (1.2 GWe and some new ones are bigger)
For the claimed capacity of mining and the real hard number
Actually you focus on actual production, not capacity. EP claims that many mines are closed or operating at reduced capacity. For ecample, if a mine is running on one 8 hour shift now, it could go to two or three shifts to dramatically increase production if the price goes up substantially.
1… Do you have references to show that all mines are running at max capacity?
what matters is the amount of natural uranium/TWh
no significant change since 1986!
2… What were the estimated reserves 30 years ago?
3… If you were writing this post 30 years ago what year would you have predicted running out of uranium?
``Actually you focus on actual production, not capacity."
yes right that is what counts not what people claim!
Quote
1… Do you have references to show that all mines are running at max capacity?
look at the Cameco second quarter report this year for example
(and the ones earlier). They are trying hard but fail to achieve the goals.
Quote
2… What were the estimated reserves 30 years ago?
3… If you were writing this post 30 years ago what year would you have predicted running out of uranium?
difficult to answer. I am not a historian.
But yes certain studies were published 30 years ago
who under the assumption that by the year 2000 we would have a capacity of 1000 GWe
that this can be done only by fast breeders
today we neither have 1000 GWe nor fast breeders ready!
does this answer the question?
michael
No it does not answer the question for #3. The issue is if you did you Redbook analysis back in 1979 with the amount of Uranium being mined etc... then when would you have predicted things to have run out. You would have ignored the possibilities of breeders back then because again there was only 1 or 2 back then. It is not a matter of being a historian, it is matter of using an old dataset and reports and running your same method over it.
Sorry I do not have access to the report from 1979 right now.
Tell me what the claimed resource numbers were at that time and I try to answer.
But what does it matter.
I make a short term prediction like other people can do based on hard facts
of nuclear reality.
The numbers are as they are.
If you disagree with some of the Red Book numbers tell me
in the chapter III I will report the shortcoming and errors I found in the resource data.
What are you trying to say with respect to the short term prospects and relative to the secondary
resources?
Do you find it a good idea for the USA to be 50% dependent on Russia's good will?
Or do you think that the USA and Russia are going to give there military might
and their strategic reserves and their power to the nuclear power plants in Europe
just for our nice blue/green/black eyes?
michael
If your methodology applied to historical datasets always gives bad results and bad predictions that would show that your methodology has problems.
If you had a methodology for predicting the future price of stocks or commodities or houses then a standard practice would be to run the method over old datasets to validate it. If it should work now then it would be pretty at working back then.
Do you see that is suggesting more scientific validation of basic assumptions in your methodology ?
It is not good will. The Russians were paid billions for their uranium. It is a matter of price. they sold before they will probably sell again if the price is right.
Plus the US has excess in its own stockpiles. The case is one of economics. Just like the issue of rising prices would spur more activity. Even the peak oil arguments here make some acknowledgement about increased prices bringing more marginal and higher costs reserves online.
Your assumptions are that political, strategic and other concerns apply and will override all economic factors in any possible agreement.
There has been new agreements with russia covering 2014-2020 for natural uranium.
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090527_russia_uranium_deal_u_s_power_...
I do not think it is unreasonable to expect that paying the market price for the down-blended uranium would not be possible if needed.
Also, Russia is planning a substantial build of new nuclear reactors so if they use their own nuclear material that would still mean better supply-demand balance.
look so far I only made a prediction on the short term effects.
you didn't dispute that one.
For the resource data from 1979 and the long term predictions.
it is not the topic right now but for what it matters
the believers in a great future of nuclear were wrong and those who
predicted that an increase up to 1000 GWe by the year 2000
will not happen.
and it did not happen!
that is a fact may be you should figure out why the great growth prediction was wrong
for now!
and wait till I present my analysis for the uranium resources early September
to discuss about resource errors and so on.
if you do not want to stay with the topic of the near term future
or are not interested in it why do you contribute?
For the link and its content.
lets see In Western Europe we get the gas from Russia
and sometimes and for some reasons it seems to flow more slowly than
it should.
What can I add if you feel comfortable with the Russian dependence
fine with me!
michael
I'd like to hear your opinion of whether "that didn't happen" because of a fuel shortage, or because of the well-known and extremely costly legal/regulatory licensing delays and uncertainties imposed by anti-nuke activists?
There are several reasons one can imagine on why it did not happen.
the uranium shortage hypothesis
which said there is not enough uranium to fuel these reactors over
their lifetime has not been tested so far.
why not because these 1000 GWe have not been constructed!
the most likely reason in my view was that the promises made by the
nuclear promoters did not hold and yes the market killed this growth as well.
michael
I dispute the assumption that worldwide mining cannot be increased. Mines have been coming online in 2009, so your projection is already looking wrong. I would also dispute the availability of other sources and the rate they would be available for substitution. There are US HEU available for blenddown if needed. Supplies from phosphate mines, coal ash etc... I say there will not be a uranium supply problem that constrains the amount of nuclear power generation. Is that a clear enough objection to your prediction ? You had also asked for my alternative predictions and I have supplied those twice. This is another annoying habit where you repeatedly claim that people are not disagreeing with some narrow aspect of your articles, when they are already disagreeing with most parts of it.
I think this is a very revealing example of your backwards thinking.
The reality is the opposite: the USA paid Russia to turn over weapons materials for destruction. This guaranteed that they could never be lost, stolen, sold to terrorists, or otherwise used against the United States or its allies.
What you are claiming is a resource problem with uranium was in truth an element of international nuclear disarmament policy. You have had this explained to you several times, but you still can't get your mind around it... or you just aren't listening. While there is no cure for stupidity, hitting someone over the head is bound to get them to pay attention. Maybe if you stopped getting so indignant about the "attacks" you're enduring, you might achieve some small bit of enlightenment.
forgot to add
does this mean that you are satisfied with the answers to the other points
and the Cameco link?
michael
``Actually you focus on actual production, not capacity."
yes right that is what counts not what people claim!
So you agree that what counts is actual capacity, not actual production or what people say, which are two other things.
In 2009 only one of 5 uranium mills in the U.S is in normal production. A lot of capacity is not in production.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/dupr/qupd_tbl3.html
1… If the world has a deadly flu outbreak the question will be, “What is our capacity to ramp up vaccine production”, not “What was our vaccine production rate for the last several years”.
Your conclusion is that we will soon have a shortage of capacity based on past production, which has always met demand. Why does your report ignore capacity and focus on production?
2… Reactor fuel assemblies cost about one half cent per kWh in 2007,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html
of which natural uranium cost is about one third.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
Fuel cost for coal was, 2.4 cents per kWh, and for natural gas, 5.67 cents.
If uranium went up 500% how much would the O&M cost / kWh change?
3… What do you think would happen at those mills in standby if the price of uranium went up by, say, 500%, due to the construction of new reactors, and that a rigorous analysis predicted the average price would stay in that range for the foreseeable future, not just a momentary spike in the spot price as we have seen in the past?
This is indeed a very valid argument. Since demand for nuclear fuel has always been met until now, the fact that past production has been low doesn't prove that it cannot be increased if the demand should be rising.
I am still concerned though because we currently take about 1/3 of our nuclear fuel from secondary sources, and those secondary sources will come to a birsk end in 2013 for two separate reasons.
Step functions are always a bad thing in production cycles. They tend to cause a shock. Thus, it remains to be seen whether the primary resources can be ramped up fast enough to compensate for the lack of secondary resources.
In this context, spare capacity is indeed a very relevant issue that needs to be looked at.
I think we have still a misunderstanding here.
I am writing about the primary and secondary natural uranium equivalent
required to operate the 370 GWe (plus some new and minus some shutdowns) for a year.
the chain to start from a rock to get the Uranium out of it in the right composition
to enrich it to make fuel roads to exchange the fuel rods (with annual shutdowns)
restart the reactor bring it to full power (a day or so) and run it stable for as long as possible
is not trivial.
So far enough spare capacity has managed to keep this going and in most countries
of the planet. In fact, at least i have not heard about the contrary even during the communist times and in the eastern
block it seemed to have worked.
ok now comes the real point
the input raw material is somehow not sufficient from mines and must be supplemented from secondary material
from past excess capacity which kills to some extend the development of new mining sites
at the same time some "older equipment will get too old and eventually stops to function in
a satisfactory way but new equipment has not been developed at some point in the past
lets compare it with the oil --> car making --> and using the car
could it happen that some old well known car makers with lots of excess capacity get out of buiseness
when better cars come from far away and people full of energy with knowledge to use the old machines
(lots of spare capacity) will not be able to use it?
anyway in this context
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/tradingdesk/archive/2009/08/18/...
First Uranium may need more financing
Posted: August 18, 2009, 7:32 AM by Peter Koven
Uranium, Mining, First Uranium
A possible liquidity shortage is looming at First Uranium Corp., according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Sterck.
Based on the company's recent guidance, Mr. Sterck lowered his uranium sales forecasts at First Uranium's Ezulwini and Mine Waste Solutions (MWS) mines to zero in fiscal 2010 (the company has had challenges ramping up production, and Mr. Sterck is assuming a three-month delay from production to point of sale).
This could be trouble, because First Uranium ended the first quarter of fiscal 2010 with a cash balance of US$123-million, but has an estimated US$266-million in capital spending still to be made, Mr. Sterck wrote. If the company is not churning out sufficient cash from selling uranium, a shortfall is possible.
for the price questions I answered already
yes it seems that the uranium cost is far too small to keep the chain going.
I can imagine that one or more of the four big uranium mine players
think they should get a much larger fraction of the cake
and that shortages might be in there interest
for the russian roulette player in the game
this might be interesting as the victim will not be the player!
(of course if it is a fatal blow the collateral damage will be large as well)
michael
the input raw material is somehow not sufficient from mines and must be supplemented from secondary material from past excess capacity which kills to some extend the development of new mining sites
could it happen that some old well known car makers with lots of excess capacity get out of buiseness
when better cars come from far away and people full of energy with knowledge to use the old machines
(lots of spare capacity) will not be able to use it?
Michael
Detroit had a virtual monopoly on the U.S. car market up to the 60’s, then cars from Europe and Japan started showing up. People marveled at how well they ran. They were economical, did not squeak or rattle, were low maintenance and did not litter their driveway with stripped bolts, screws and other loose hardware.
Detroit’s market share has been shrinking ever since. Did foreign car makers move into the U.S. because Detroit could not produce enough cars to meet demand? No, Detroit had enough capacity to cover football fields all over the country with unsold cars. Detroit lost market share because customers found other options with a better cost / benefit ratio.
The destruction of weapons grade uranium and plutonium has some great benefits for the entire world. I am glad that utilities have switched to that source for part of their fuel and hope it will continue.
You seem to understand this principle applied to cars, why not to the uranium supply?
People marveled at how well they ran.
No, they really didn't. The first Japanese and European cars, like the first Datsuns and Beetles, were terrible. They sold because they were really, really cheap, in part due to lower wages, in part due to indirect subsidies.
It was only in the 80's that they really started moving upmarket, using their cost advantages to invest in quality.
Nick are you old enough to remember those early imports or just taking all this on hearsay and extrapolating conclusions from market share numbers? Actually, the early imports were in the fifties and early sixties.
By 1969 Datsun had introduced the 240Z, a good, very competitive little sports car. Toyota Corollas of the late sixties and beyond were very well thought of small cars (mind you small cars as a whole weren't well thought of by the mainstream). These cars came better than fifteen years before the mid eighties.
The seventies saw Detroit get lazy and produce a relatively homogenous product across the board, but early in the seventies gasoline still sold cheap so economical cars didn't have much operational cost edge over roomy boats. After oil was deregulated under Carter-which caused gas prices to double in very short order-smaller cars getting decent mileage got noticed a whole lot more and lots of people realized many were well made and generally handled much better than the boats to boot.
All the while the Japanese had been adding models and features. By the early eighties the Honda Accord was making substantial inroads into mid level market as it performed well, had lots of amazing standard features (like intermittent wipers and cruise control if I recall), was fun to drive as it handled well and was a decent mid to long haul car.
By the mid eighties one of the big three, Chrysler, had already endured a brush with death brought on by its pitiful foresight, poor decisions and the onslaught over a decade and a half of well made ever improving Japanese cars.
Beetles didn't have quite the same story though, but they broke the ground for the import wave and that was very significant in itself.
I probably shouldn't have digressed so much from the main post but the improvement in the Japanese cars didn't just suddenly jump out of no where in the mid eighties as your post seems to imply, it was a twenty five year process that went nearly unheaded by Detroit. All this might not seem worth mentioning except that THE SAME THING JUST HAPPENED AGAIN. This time two of the former big three went bankrupt when oil prices jumped.
Japanese cars didn't just suddenly jump out of no where in the mid eighties as your post seems to imply
I agree - imports improved steadily (Japanese faster than European). You'd agree that they had a poor start?
My points were several-fold: imports started at poor quality; they improved in large part due to cost advantages which allowed greater investment in quality; imports competed first in a low-cost small car niche; as you note, they only moved into the mid level market much later.
I think it's a mistake to attribute Detroit's gradual loss of sales to imports to bad management. Instead, it mostly depends on accidents of history & US trade and foreign policy: Detroit had unsustainable labor and benefit costs, higher interest rates and taxes, and adverse exchange rates.
Detroit's management had no control over this sharply higher cost structure - only changes in Federal policy, and a final crisis & bankruptcy, could change them.
This sharply higher cost structure starved Detroit of the funds needed for investments in higher quality, especially of parts, which largely determine vehicle reliability.
I disagree on your assessment that Detroit's management decisions are not at the heart of Detroit' demise. My rebuttal will merely be anecdotal so it has limited worth. However, it certainly is interesting which of my trucks were good and which were garbage.
I have owned a 1950, 1955, 1970, 1974, 1988, 1999, and (currently) 2003 Chevy/GMC pickups. Now the first two were worn out when I got them so I will leave them out. The 1970 had 130,000 miles on it when I bought it 180,000 when sold, needed relatively little upkeep and ran well long after my stint of owning it. The 1974 I got when it was young, but it aged quickly, I traded it for the 1970, some cash and a saddle and got the best part of the deal by a long shot. The last three pickups I bought new. The 1988 had few issues, I drove it 188,000 miles and gave it to my son who put another 50,000 on it. The 1999 started having substantial failures before it reached 50,000 so I unloaded it. The 2003 has more soft spots than I care to know about but I am likely to be stuck with it. Management set the specs for these vehicles, their cost cutting on major operational components while adding cushy marketable features weakened the product. It is no accident Detroit's market share slid drastically of late, they sold a lot of crap. I'm sure the factors you mentioned played a part, but the truck/SUV bubble made Detroit a lot of money. To gain a bigger share of that profitable bubble GM at least took its eye off the ball and forgot what it was that made their pickups really good and thus popular in the first place. They got away with that in the midseventies because Detroit made almost all the pickups back then. That is not the case any more.
Management set the specs for these vehicles
Yes, but they also accepted low bids for parts, and pushed their parts suppliers viciously for cost reductions. There's no way for suppliers to maintain quality in that environment.
their cost cutting on major operational components while adding cushy marketable features weakened the product. It is no accident Detroit's market share slid drastically of late, they sold a lot of crap.
No question.
I'm sure the factors you mentioned played a part, but the truck/SUV bubble made Detroit a lot of money.
No, it just allowed them to survive.
To gain a bigger share of that profitable bubble GM at least took its eye off the ball and forgot what it was that made their pickups really good and thus popular in the first place.
They didn't forget - they had no choice.
They got away with that in the midseventies because Detroit made almost all the pickups back then.
Sure.
Nick, it sounds like either you have done an extensive case study on Detroit for maybe an MBA or are/were deeply involved in Detroit' parts supply chain. I infer that you feel the souls of those companies are whole and about to rise like the phoenix from the ashes of bankruptcy, that the division managers were blameless as they followed the marketers (my major back in the bronze age by the way)and financiers deeper into the morass of modern American business, that GM was the world's largest company and it could only go on by selfdestructing then being reborn. Maybe so, maybe the mean feds set different regs for Detroit than for the imports, the UAW certainly was more than inflexible than it should have been, pie in the sky that can't be delivered is so loved by the members (not in the unions I'm familiar with though). I hope you are right.
I don't have near the inside window on Detroit you seem to have. Mine is what I get every time I bring a defective rig in for warranty work. Years ago I read people would rather go to the dentist than the dealer's service department. I would rather get a root canal. At least there would be a fair chance the dentist would do good work and actually fix the problem. There has been almost no chance of the happening for some time with Mr. Goodwrench's bunch.
I didn't mean to blow off your question about the rocky start the imports had last post by the way. Yes I agree those early imports were pretty poor automobiles. Detroit had good reason to see no threat coming from those cars, but conditions changed fairly quickly and Detroit was way too arrogant and obstinate to respond in truly competitive manner until things were way too far gone.
Nick, you and I a pretty far from the uranium discussion here but it has been a good tangent.
I infer that you feel the souls of those companies are whole and about to rise like the phoenix from the ashes of bankruptcy,
I think they have a decent chance. Unfortunately, the bankruptcy didn't fully reduce Detroit's wage & benefits to a competitive level (the UAW had a lot of clout, and a proper restructuring would have been very bad psychologically for the economy). OTOH, I think they've closed the overall structural cost gap by perhaps 60%, which will help a lot.
the division managers were blameless as they followed the marketers (my major back in the bronze age by the way)and financiers deeper into the morass of modern American business
They didn't have much choice, given their budgets. The move to dependence on rebates/price reductions and marketing, rather than engineering and fundamentals, was cost-driven. I don't think they were blameless: they never treated their engineers as well as they should have, and finance/marketing did get too powerful (Iaccoca is a good counter-example: he was an Industrial Engineer, and clearly one of Detroit's best managers).
On the other hand, mistreatment of engineers is a national illness: the prestige and pay of engineers in the US has crashed since WWII, displaced in the social hierarchy by doctors, lawyers (to some extent) and financiers.
It's worth noting that the US also misallocates it's engineering talent: about half of all engineers work in the "military-industrial complex". How often have you seen the best engineering products in the US marked "not for export"?
GM was the world's largest company and it could only go on by selfdestructing then being reborn.
Yes. The UAW was too strong, because of pattern bargaining
and government support for the unions.
maybe the mean feds set different regs for Detroit than for the imports
Imports had lower wages and benefits (both in their countries of origin, and in Southern "transplants"); lower interest rates and taxes (especially in Japan), and artificially low exchange rates (which has improved slightly recently).
pie in the sky that can't be delivered is so loved by the members (not in the unions I'm familiar with though).
Almost all unions were susceptible to excessive promises on benefits, especially pensions - "30 and out" was (and is) a disaster.
I'm more familiar with the construction trade unions myself. 30 and out comes with SUBSTANTIALLY reduced benefits in many of them. Others have only defined contribution plans in which the balances were nicely halved last year as the market imploded. Longer life spans don't necessarily mean that the working life in physically demanding fields has been equally extended. In the construction trades the union hand is little more than day labor with a tool belt/kit and a well developed skill set. Whether or not modern UAW work is as demanding I don't know. Robots have picked up much of the dangerous exposure in auto manufacture but I'm guessing in the assembly area people are used where is too damned expensive to try and make a machine that can do what they can. But all that said, long term survival of a union requires long term survival of the industry it mans. It seems to have taken a collapse to make the UAW realize they had take into account all the players in the game even if many were not sitting at the negotiating table.
Government support for unions is not near as strong as many believe, though. That union membership has been steadily shrinking for decades in all sectors of the economy except government is evidence of how thin the ice the unions walk on is. That wasn't good for Detroit either since low wage help around the country couldn't afford new cars. Government protection of workers is a much trickier balancing act than many think. But then maybe it is time for the forty hour work week to go, time and half to disappear, workman's comp to evaporate, safety regulations be abolished and the worker to once again assume all risk when he or she enters the work place (ah the good old days of England), after all it was their choice to go to work, they could have been pure finders, bone pickers, beggars or thieves, no one made them get a job. Things get bad enough it will go that way anyhow, but trying to squeeze the workers for all the profits possible is very short sighted, since workers without money don't buy products. If the unions are forced out of existence the multipliers on lower workers wages will render a smaller product and the economy will shrink all the more, then watch the scramble to be in the last dying remnant of the middle class. Oops I rambled out a bit far, there does have to be balance and a union that is too strong can destroy the balance near as well as an omnipotent owner--agreed
The Detroit management failures go back at least to the seventies and eighties when there was money. Detroit should have started reducing redundant product lines back then, or reshaped those lines to specifically compete with foreign companies who were already then providing the variety needed for a vibrant market place. The horse was well out of the barn before Detroit considered closing the doors. Even now GMC and Chevy still make virtually identical pickup trucks, brilliant. I know there are contractual hurdles involved here but managers with enough foresight, competence, sand and authority (I am just guessing but corporate structure and culture may have made it impossible for managers with those qualities to survive, setting the stage for failure long before the import threat even occurred) could have started turning things around long ago.
The American people themselves are hardly blameless with their penchant for big rigs. I certainly have had at least my share, but I have had 80's Accords and Camries along with them side by side. I would have been happy to had equivalent Detroit models instead but THERE WEREN'T ANY. Damn UAW must have told the management what to make.
Your points on our poor treatment and use of engineers are right on--not to mention how much of their time evaporates in the ridiculously complex permitting process (that is a construction thing and possibly doesn't carry over to the rest of manufacturing). Dwight's warnings when he coined the term military industrial complex were right on. I just reread the speech and thought the following quote from it would move my post back toward a TOD message.
"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow." Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
30 and out comes with SUBSTANTIALLY reduced benefits in many of them. Others have only defined contribution plans
I have the impression that the carpenter's union doesn't reduce benefits. Is that right? I know that transit worker and AFSCME pensions tend not to.
UAW pensions were (and, I believe still are) breathtaking.
I agree about the decline of unions. I also agree that Detroit's management wasn't blameless - they were slow to recognize the threat, and way too complacent and short-term oriented. Still, better management couldn't have fixed the structural cost problems.
I would have been happy to had equivalent Detroit models instead
Did you look at the Chevy Nova? It was a Chevy branded Corolla. I was never sure why it didn't sell well.
the ridiculously complex permitting process
And all of those plans still have to be submitted on paper, I bet.
Dwight's warnings when he coined the term military industrial complex were right on.
Yes. It's a bit disappointing that he waited until the end of his term to say it, which suggests that he didn't think he or anyone else could really do anything about it.
unions
The carpenters national pension, as far as I am aware is only for union officers and I have never looked into it. The other pensions are either setup up by regional councils, only in the last decade have many locals been brought into these, and locals. The pensions vary substantially. In the Alaska regional council, Anchorage has both defined benefit and defined contribution, and I believe like the laborers a certain percentage of defined benefit pension is lost for every year the retiree retires before the set age 60-65, I can't remember which. In Fairbanks the defined benefit pension serves only a few members as it was rolled into, after a fashion, a defined contribution only package after a lawsuit filed about vesting requirements during the pipeline era got very messy. These contracts are renegotiated every three years and when times are tough the raises do not keep pace with inflation. After the post pipeline construction crash, wage/benefits did not go up for a long time and many separate contracts were negotiated to work for 80% of scale.
That is plenty too much in specifics but I am just trying to illustrate how complex the wage benefit issue is at least in the Alaska trade unions. Additionally, nationwide union scale for the carpenters varies by near 50% with several different scales within each negotiating district (generally regional councils, but a few locals have hung on to their autonomy). Alaska has full commercial, light commercial and residential scale (the first defined by a building square foot amount, 10000 square feet in Fairbanks and 30000 square feet in Anchorage).
Just to give a little more inkling on how diverse-though confused may sometimes be a better description-the construction union picture is, the Juneau carpenters, millwrights statewide and pile drivers statewide also maintain their own locals within the Alaska regional division of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. Add to this all the other trades (nothing unusual to have at least the best part of a dozen on any decent sized job) and you can see a union picture that is quite the opposite of the massive, powerful UAW, whose awesome wage/benefits were certainly a major contributor to an awful result (thanks for calling me on that one). Of course negotiating with all these entities (back to building trades now) and dealing with their jurisdictions and competing work scopes can be more than a little ungainly and counterproductive. Many umbrella associations try to smooth this some. Its quite the morass, that is for sure--kind of like my post here.
Nova
My dad bought a Nova/Toyota. It was a great car, unfortunately is developed a little seal leak and spotted his new garage floor-the first garage he had to park in since I was a toddler-so he impulsively traded it off for a new Ford Tempo which blew up shortly after its short warranty ran out. I didn't even get the chance to give him an offer on the Nova. Oh well, he was good old WWII veteran (had the lovely job of medic in the retaking of the Philippines) so whatever made him happy was good enough for us, though I did 'give him the business' as he would have said, about the trade.
Ike
Since I wound us back to WWII, it kind of brings us back to Ike. I do need to read more on/by him, but your point about his not mentioning any of those issues until the farewell speech, three days before Kennedy was to take over, is very likely right on. He could see the freight train was picking up speed, which made stopping it something not even thought of yet. After all he had seen and all the lives he knew his decisions had affected for better or worse, he seems to have felt compelled to at least go on record about the necessity of throttling down and considering using the brakes.
On a technical note, my HTML skills are very limited. I would have liked to made Ike's 'farewell speech' into a live link (it is very brief and hits on much that now ails us) but I've no clue how to do that--a long URL in the middle of a post is rather distracting. Any help here would be appreciated. thanks
Thanks for the carpenter's union notes. I've seen multiple parallel union negotiations - messy.
Ike: yes, he did the best he could.
Use (a href="URL")TEXT(/a)
where TEXT is what you want to appear, and pointed brackets (greater or less than symbols) replace parentheses.
Thanks for the help
engineers
Missed this point last post: It does seem the permitting process has strong ties with the pulp industry, kind of odd when an environmental impact statement almost needs an impact statement of its own.
Ike
Eisenhower's farewell speech
Your welcome.
paper: has anyone seen a permitting process that doesn't require paper??
Nick,
1) The Wagner Act plus lowering trade barriers set GM on the road to bankruptcy. The Wagner Act forced GM into labor agreements and labor relations that raised costs, lowered quality, and lowered the rate of process innovation. It just took over 70 years to get there.
2) But GM could have made it another 10 years before bankruptcy if it had gotten the quality religion back in the 1970s. It did not need UAW cooperation for many ways to improve quality.
Some aspects of quality cost more. But other aspects of quality are cheaper. When GM failed to go very aggressively after ways to control processes to improve quality that ultimately saved money (by enhancing perceived value, reducing warranty costs, allowing greater understanding of process and hence better understanding of how to cut process costs) GM sealed its fate.
Both these causes matter.
The Wagner Act plus lowering trade barriers set GM on the road to bankruptcy.
Yes, the existence of unions was a big factor. They alone didn't do it. There was also a society-wide disregard for long-term planning for the costs of pension; a variety of US indirect subsidies for Japan; and a variety of Japanese indirect subsidies for manufacturers.
Edit: don't forget employer-based health insurance (why does Ontario have more car manufacturing than Michigan?) and a Strong Dollar policy.
I don't think Detroit was blameless. Their lack of understanding of quality (including the basic concept of Doing It Right The First Time that underlies statistical process quality control and gives the cost savings you noted) was certainly a problem.
But, as you note, perfect management couldn't have saved them.
Agreed. Looking at past production data alone doesn't suffice to decide on the ability of the industry to react to fuel shortages, which never happened so far. The vaccine example certainly is valid.
Yet, we have also read, e.g. in a comment made by Engineer-Poet, that it takes some time from the moment uranium-rich ore is extracted from the ground until we have finished fuel rods that can be inserted in nuclear power plants.
Thus, if I were an operator of a nuclear power plant, which I am not, I would make sure to sign contracts for delivery of fuel rods sufficiently in advance of when I need them in order to guarantee that they will be available at that time.
Thus, if we already know, by analyzing past data the way Michael did, that there is a potential problem in fuel delivery looming in 2013, we cannot wait until 2013 with ramping up production. We must start sufficiently early to make sure that the production of new fuel rods will be in full swing come 2013.
To stay with the vaccine metaphor: if we know that the swine flu is coming to the Northern hemisphere this fall, we don't wait with producing vaccines until the flu season starts, but rather, we make good use of the summer months to start producing vaccines as fast as we can.
Thus, if we already know that there is a potential problem with the delivery of nuclear fuel in 2013, we should pick up an increase in mining operations just about now -- not finished fuel rods yet, mind you, only mining operations.
If this doesn't happen pretty soon, then Michael's prediction will certainly become reality.
Do we see already an increase in mining operations? Does anyone know?
Even if methods such as in-situ leaching cannot be scaled up rapidly in response to a shrinking supply of ex-weapons material, there are plenty of alternatives to mining.
Re-enrichment of DU tails is a massive, though expensive, source of LEU. For instance, if the body of DU tailings contains 0.25% U-235 and these are re-processed to make more LEU and a new tails stream at 0.15% U-235, the amount of new LEU is roughly 20% of the total quantity of LEU produced in the first enrichment. "The first enrichment" includes all LEU made from the DU which remains in inventory, all the way back to the start of the nuclear age. 20% of all the LEU produced thus far is a massive amount of fuel; the US has about 60,000 tons of spent fuel in inventory, so the US share of this potential re-enrichment product would be about 12,000 tons of LEU. At perhaps 50 tons of LEU for an initial fuel load and 1/3 of this for a reload, this is enough to fuel ~250 new reactors or provide ~750 biannual reloads.
If you had 12 years of fuel on hand for all the reactors operating or planned, would you be worried about a supply crunch in 2013? I'd laugh at it too.
The major problem with this is the large SWU (Separative Work Unit) burden required to enrich such a low-quality input stream to the level required for LWR fuel. I could see difficulties in this; it is costly in both energy and money and requires lots of equipment. However, Dr. Dittmar does not give any hint as to the concentration of the DU tailings. He does not even mention SWU in his post, and he has not responded to any of the questions on this in the comments. Since this is key to the issue, I have to ask: was he just careless, or is he trying to hide something? Dodging the issue for so long looks like the latter.
if I were an operator of a nuclear power plant, which I am not, I would make sure to sign contracts for delivery of fuel rods sufficiently in advance of when I need them in order to guarantee that they will be available at that time.
François, we agree on the principle.
Thus, if we already know, by analyzing past data the way Michael did, that there is a potential problem in fuel delivery looming in 2013, we cannot wait until 2013 with ramping up production.
I agree with most of this statement as well, but that is a very big IF.
The utilities have experts who’s job is to study the uranium market in great detail and acquire contracts that will provide a very reliable supply of fuel. To avoid risking their careers I would expect them to make very conservative decisions. Keep in mind that fuel assemblies are very cheap and compact on a per kWh basis. Storing a year’s supply of coal or gas on site is not practical, but keeping a year or more of new fuel is easy with reactors.
A goggle search reveals that most uranium mills in the U.S. are on standby. I expect those experts know the condition of every significant mine and mill on the planet. If they see a problem they would be bidding up the price now.
Some people think the volatility of the spot market is a bad thing, but it is really a reflection of what buyers and sellers see in the future. Perhaps this was a factor in the spot price run-up of 2007. The falling price indicates that the experts are comfortable now.
The combined opinion of dozens of career experts is different than Michael’s, and a review of ALL the data supports the experts.
I understand your way of reasoning, Bill, but I don't see where Michael's data would be in error. As far as I can tell, they are rock solid. Contrary to what Engineer-Poet suggested, Michael didn't cherry-pick his numbers. They were carefully extracted from a number of official documents, and Michael was very careful to compare these numbers with each other and try to compute each of them in more than one way, if and when possible.
I agree that you cannot conclude from the historical data offered in these documents that there is no spare capacity, because the data measure past actual production, not past potential production, but this is a different issue altogether.
The spare capacity, if it exists, should be activated by now in order to prevent a shortage by 2013. I have no explanation why this isn't happening, and I agree with your assessment that the operators, if they recognize a potential problem ahead of them, would try to secure their own supply, which should jack the prices up if there is a shortage of supplies in the future. Clearly, this isn't happening, and I don't have a good explanation for it.
Bill, but I don't see where Michael's data would be in error.
François, I am not saying it is in error. It is incomplete. I would like to see a spreadsheet of all the mines and mills in the world. How many are in standby waiting for higher prices? How many are operating at reduced capacity waiting for higher prices? If Michael has reviewed a full data set he should present it. If not he does not have enough information to draw a conclusion. The experts do.
We know there is a great deal of unused capacity in the U.S. If that is true elsewhere it would explain the low price and lack of concern among the experts.
The spare capacity, if it exists, should be activated by now in order to prevent a shortage by 2013.
It does not take 4 years to start an existing mill in standby, or to ramp up one running at low capacity.
Excellent re-direct. I would add that even that information is of little use without documenting raw yellowcake inventories and fuel rod inventories.
Should it? How do you know this? Can you tell me the actual schedule for production of LEU fuel rods, starting with yellowcake delivered from the mine? If this is 2 years and not 4, we might not expect to see increased deliveries for another 2 years. Mining activity would step up sometime next year.
There is every reason for companies not to buy ahead of their need. Adding physical inventory costs money and has carrying costs, unlike a Memorandum of Understanding. A contract for future capacity is bound to be much cheaper than current delivery. Unless there is an immediate supply problem—and even according to Dittmar's projections, we'll see about 5 years of shrinking civilian inventories before the problem really bites—we don't have anything that will actually affect generation.
No, I don't know how long it takes from the moment you get uranium-rich ore out of the ground (in existing mines with spare capacity) until you have finished fuel rods than can be inserted into a nuclear reactor. This was my question earlier.
If indeed this process takes only two years, that would indeed explain why we don't see enhanced activity and/or increased prices yet.
That very point is crucial to Dittmar's conclusion, yet he doesn't address it (that belonged in Chapter I). The issue of how long it takes to start an in-situ leaching operation, and how much it costs, is very significant and also not addressed. For instance, if an ISL mine costs $40/lb, enough activity on the futures market at the last price of $49/lb would lead someone to fill the futures contracts and book a $9/lb profit. These mines would be unprofitable at the long-term contract prices around $25/lb, but that's not the marginal demand which is being addressed here.
When TOD looks at alternatives to conventional crude such as tar sands and coal liquefaction, one of the things we look at is the cost to get 1 bbl/day. Equivalent data for uranium are completely missing from this series so far. I would hope that Dr. Dittmar would realize that his work has gaps you could sail a container ship through, and go back to address them before going on to Chapter III. If he revised his paper in the light of new information, it could only improve the product... and it would address most of the objections raised here.
Again, theres about a zillion tonnes of uranium hexafluoride tails from enrichment sitting around and Eurodif alone isn't going to be dismantled until 2020. If theres a run on uranium, theres going to still be substantial enrichment capacity for a long time to tap depleted uranium tails while mines are ramped up.
The notion that reactors will be pressed out of service when you have literally years worth of stockpiled fuel at some reactors and decades worth of fuel in depleted uranium simply doesn't pass the smell test.
I believe the Kayelekera mine has started producing, and also a new one in Kazakhstan. There may be others.
Total production has been increasing about two percent a year over the last 12 years.
http://world-nuclear.org/info/uprod.html
(How fire can be domesticated)
Do I need to quote again what I wrote in my second article about that?
Or perhaps you can find it yourself!
I gave you what is perhaps the most accurate number
on military reserves.
But isn't it clear that even this draw down is limited by some capacities right now?
And more important by remaining cold war mentality in the USA and in Russia?
Otherwise let me ask a counter question
do you really believe that the USA will open their strategic reserves to the European
and Asian competitors just for our beauty?
michael
I believe you do. A number of us have looked at the evidence you gave and decided that your conclusion is a non-sequitur. You leave too many unknowns:
If you can put an error bar on the size of these resources and they still don't equal the forecast requirements, you've got something. But your references don't support the claim of a crisis. For instance, the Layton presentation (your endnote #10, page 6) posits that orders for uranium for use in a core required in 2013 will come next year (2 or 3 year lead time) and the 2016 fuel deliveries will use uranium ordered in 2012.
The Layton presentation also mentions the tails assay of DU. The levels are rather high for non-Russian material; 0.240% U-235 is typical. There is a lot of recoverable U-235 in this; Russian DU is 0.130-0.150%. There may be little spare capacity in the enrichment market to 2013 (which appears to assume that the Paducah GD plant isn't operable at anything close to full capacity), but the new reactors in the USA won't be going critical until 2015 or so. There is room for slippage in the schedules.
You only posit a 5000 ton/yr shortfall. The unused ISL capacity in the US last year (3.5 million lb/y U3O8) was on the order of 1/6 of this all by itself. The Layton presentation also has the per-lb capital expenditure for the ISL at the Honeymoon mine: $68/lb/yr (page 11). Operational expenditures are ~$20/lb, so in an extreme case where shortages drove the spot price of U to $88/lb a new ISL mine could pay off its entire capital expenditure in 1 year. The average price projected is $35/lb. Layton says "[factors] could see spot prices rally, but the impact on the short term fundamentals of the market appear limited, so any large rally in prices will be a good selling opportunity." (page 13, emphasis added)
As I've said before, your sources do not support your conclusions.
NB: I uncovered a news article which stated that work on the Honeymoon ISL mine started April this year and production will commence the middle of next year. Call it around 14-16 months.
Remember Eurodif also. Its scheduled to be replaced by centrifuge enrichment capcaity, but it isn't dismantled until 2020. This represents an enormous surplus of enrichment capacity in a crisis.
Perhaps you can point out where you disagree?
from a few comments you make here it seems that you agree more or less
little spare capacity
room for slippage
and so it goes some 5000 tons/year are missing
and thus 5-10% forced shutdowns or early retirements
or similar.
Thus,
my conclusion is that the official data are inconsistent with the
growth scenario between 1-2% per year!
if the military reserves from the USA and Russia will not be opened
for European / Asian users!
in fact the Euratom agency has published an interesting report
about the future western european needs
and yes from todays 23000 tons/year reactor requirements (more than 1/3 of the planet)
it is expected to go down to something like 17000 tons by 2023 or so
(if needed I can dig out the document with more precise numbers)
remark the German termination plans of nuclear energy
would reduce by only 3000 tons!
so much for the growth of nuclear energy.
May be besides the wishful thinking in Europe
the people behind (the clever operators etc..) have
already decided how it will evolve!
michael
You're going to have to be a little less incoherent, and apparently you're not even looking at the numbers. Enrichment capacity globally is rising very fast, such that Eurodif is supposed to be retired next year. But it doesn't get dismantled untill next decade.
You realize we have literally millions of tons of DU stockpiled as uranium hexafluoride gas right next to these enrichment facilities, right?
And this is predicated on the fiction that mining capacity wont rise in lockstep. The world you must live in. Tell you what, you want to make a fantastic amount of money because you are so sure of your position: Put it all into uranium futures.
If the CDU party stays in power (election in a month), German nukes aren't likely to be shut down. It's true Europe is quite backwards when it comes to nuclear, but economic giants UK and Italy are re-evaluating their stances and I'd guess they'll start building within a decade, as will Germany. (At least if AGW stays high on the EU agenda.)
Hi,
that remains to be seen!
but for what its worse..
the Euratom supply agency is doing the long term planning
its not my numbers that show a decline of 6000 tons
by 2023 or so.
have a look at the tables on page 30 in the appendix
http://ec.europa.eu/euratom/ar/last.pdf
If Euratom is making long term contracts on this basis
well how many nuclear power plants will be operational
in 2008 2015 2025 ??
well it is roughly the ratio (reactor needs)
21810 tons
17462 tons
and 14492 tons
the numbers indicate a decline in europe -1/3
within 15 years only
don't they?
if the long term contracts are made like that
what will some populist from the CDU do about that
shout in the wind to get some votes and forget again
michael
They foresee the German phase-out which is not likely, but furthermore, they assume the amount of natural uranium needed will be lower due to more intense enrichment - i.e. there will be less U235 in tailings. Also, there is the issues of reprocessing and of inventory management. So I don't think you can draw the 1/3 conclusion.
Being pro-nuclear is anti-populist. They will get the uranium anyhow.
Just to remind you (look for the numbers in chapter I)
germany requires about 3000 tons / year!
thus another decline of 2000-3000 tons must be associated with other countries.
also, if you would take the time to look
they talk about the natural uranium equivalent needs.
thus it has nothing to do with tail, recycling etc.
sorry but you opinion is not based on facts!
For the pro-nuclear .. don't you spread the message that the light can stay on
and that our good life can continue if we just allow some more nuclear power plants?
Compare this with the ugly message of slow down!
Michael
No, the net drop is only about 3000 tons, which is about what Germany needs. From the report you cite: "The foreseen decline over the years reflects the planned closure of reactors in some Member States, especially Germany, and the small number of firm plans for new reactors, although several others are planned."
Wrong again.
"Net requirements are calculated on the basis of reactor needs less the contributions from currently planned uranium/plutonium recycling, and taking account of inventory management as communicated to the Agency by utilities."
and...
"Average estimated net requirements for natural uranium for the next 10 years are down 0.6 % but forecast net enrichment requirements are up 2.0 % from the previous estimates (for total reactor needs the figures are +0.2 % for natural uranium and +2.0 % for enrichment). This reflects further decreasing tails assays due to the current relationship between natural uranium and enrichment prices."
I am not sure if we are talking about the same numbers! probably not!
I looked at the overall requirements
appendix 2
called
Reactor requirements
they go down from 2008 21810 tons
to 14492 tons by 2027
that is what counts in order to determine how much power can be expected according to each year
the german forecast in this counting makes only 3000 tons.
now you seem to talk about the net requirements nd how this comes together.
perhaps you could figure out yourself that we were addressing different numbers
but if you prefer to
shout "wrong again" fine with me. But does it convince anybody?
I think for most the situation according to Euratom is obvious
a larger number of reactors will be retired without replacement!
michael
Look at the same table, one column to the right, and you will see "net requirements". That is the relevant figure, and I have explained why with a few citations. Please read them again if you do not understand.
For most, the situation is obvious: Euratom goes with the official licensed life times of reactors. As we all know, licenses are extended and plants refurbished. Also, we know public opinion is getting more nuke-friendly every day, and that many EU governments are reevaluating nuclear in a positive way.
I understand that you are talking about the net requirements!
Can you calculate the total power in GWe from the net or from the numbers
of natural uranium equivalent I prefer to use?
Unfortunately the Euratom people have not done the calculation for us
or prefer to hide it.
Anyway my numbers are easy 170 tons/year/GWe
what are yours?
and as you say:
`` Euratom goes with the official licensed life times of reactors."
thats exactly the point!
not only the reactors in Germany are on the list but many more!
for example the three older and smaller reactors in Switzerland
(about 1 GWe together) will have a hard time to get a new license to run beyond 2015/16
and in the optimistic planning a new big one could be ready perhaps by 2022 or so.
similar for UK lots of really old reactors will be terminated
without replacement
this is very consistent with the slow phase out!
If you agree that uranium fuel is largely ordered in a long term deal
it looks like that the "market" tension will be reduced by the EU slow down!
in case the WNA news said that the new bulgarian plant will be in trouble
as the German company Eon is running out of money to
put it in the most profitable(?) investment opportunity
just one example.
I agree that there are a number of small, old power reactors in the EU that will probably close in this time period. But I believe the stage is set for these to be replaced and for capacity to be built out - on average one new reactor would be sufficient to replace three old ones.
UK nuke plans are quite impressive, contrary to your statement of older reactors not being replaced.
*UK nuke plans are quite impressive, contrary to your statement of older reactors not being replaced.
yes the plans are impressive
but it seems that reality is far from it!
the "overoptimistic WNA" report reads like
that nothing at all is fixed so far (besides the shut downs (and may be the resulting blackouts?)
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf84.html
at the same time the financial chaos is hitting hard in the UK
not much money left ..
if required that WNA news item strengthened my case for Europe
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Tough_decisions_ahead_for_the_Bulga...
Well, the current financial crisis is more of a possibility, actually, since there is spare, cheap capacity in the industry, which would make plants cheaper. However, unfortunately, they won't start building for a few years yet, and the crisis is soon over.
About over-optimism: You present the Euratom view that disregard all construction plans and fully counts all end-of-life plans. Then we have WNA, that fully counts all construction plans and (almost) disregards all end-of-life plans. I think the truth is somewhere in-between, don't you?
And I think that while WNA is certainly being a bit optimistic, they are consistent over time. This means that the impressive increase in their global outlook from January 2007 which showed 22, 69, 124 GW in construction, planning and proposal stages, to current figures of 44, 150, 289 GW, does represent a real change in the nuclear industry's momentum.
Several of us have been using your 170 t/GW-yr as a basis, but you are not responding to our questions. For instance, when I asked you about supply issues here, your response was very dismissive:
"Perhaps you can point out where you disagree?"
Your own sources disagree with you. We do not understand how you reached your conclusion. We have asked you to explain several times, breaking things down into more detail and addressing issues like SWU capacity. SWU is a huge factor; if you are producing LEU at 3.75% from NU at 0.72% U-235, your yield rises from 137 kg LEU/ton NU to 163 kg LEU as you go from a tails assay of 0.24% to 0.13%. That is a 19% increase in product yield with the same input for about a 1/3 increase in SWU per unit LEU (60% more SWU per ton of input).
Several of us have also noticed this. If it is important to your argument, writing an essay without obtaining this calculation means you cannot support any conclusion which relies on it.
As I just posted elsewhere in this discussion, I think you are confusing your desires with your facts. One half of your desires is accelerated nuclear disarmament (not a bad idea... if it includes N. Korea, Pakistan and Iran). This appears to be the other half:
As I noted in another comment just minutes ago, the 5000 mt/yr demand you claim is not satisfied can be met by 15 more mines on the scale of the Honeymoon ISL operation in Australia. At USD 60 million capital expenditure each, the total capex for these mines would be under USD 1 billion. This could supply the 500 ton requirement you claim to start 10 new reactors per year, or the on-going uranium requirements for 30 reactors. If we assume the cost of a plant is $5 billion, the capex for the mines is 2% of the plant cost to start, and 0.7% of the plant cost to continue operation. This is down in the noise.
At $20/lb O&M cost to produce U3O8, the 500 tons metallic U to start a reactor costs $26 million; compared to the capex for the plant itself, this is insignficant. The annual refuelling cost is about $8.8 million. For a 1 GW plant running at 90% capacity factor, this is about 0.11¢/kWh. Again, down in the noise. How is this going to force shutdowns and retirements?
I'm taking all of this from your own sources, Michael. How can you possibly claim confidence in conclusions so wildly out of sync with the data you allegedly used to reach them?
I think we went through this discussion.
Michael based his prediction about a shortage looming in 2013 on (correct and valid) past production data. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't take free capacity into account. Since sufficient reserves (partly civil and partly military) were available, there was no need to produce more to meet the demand. Thus, we cannot conclude from a lack of production a lack of capability to produce.
The projected shortage in 2013 is real, but you wrote elsewhere that, according to publications, it only takes about 3 years to ramp up production, i.e., we cannot conclude from the fact that production hasn't been ramped up yet, that it won't still ramp up in time to meet the shortage in 2013. The ramp-up should start in 2010, and therefore, we should be able to see it fairly soon if it will indeed materialize.
The argument was also made that the operators of the current nuclear power plants are confident that they can buy fuel when they need it, because if this were not true, we should see already now an increase in the prices of nuclear fuel, which isn't visible yet.
Concerning new nuclear reactors, since their construction takes at least somewhere around 5 years (this seems to be an absolute minimum because of the safety regulations), and since the start-up of new production of nuclear fuel takes less time than that (3 years), we wouldn't see an increase in production until the construction of the new power plant has already started.
Yes indeed we went through all this.
The future is not fixed yet.
However, large scale projects take time, and usually much more time than predicted.
This is true for nuclear power plants, new uranium mines (Cigar lake disaster!) and many many other things like
for new large particle accelerators (not the topic
but if it matters I received a strange (warning?) mail to "shut up" right after the first article
saying something about the LHC delays and that one should not write on other topics before the project
is shown to function) .
What I wrote in the articles is that current policies are pointing directly to a supply crunch
in uranium fuel provision. I am not the only one and if you want
I only justified the statement / warning from the NEA/IAEA press declaration.
In the second paper I present the situation with remaining civilian and military stocks.
The data are as they are and the politics as well.
claimed capacities is not the same thing as real capacities!
The nuclear energy sector is full by fake (ghost) capacities!
What does it help that some capacity is already in place for the floated Cigar Lake mine?
Similar for oil refineries. What are they good when the peak problem will become obvious?
The believers in nuclear energy here on the oil drum should explain why
they are often very clear about the oil situation but believe in the nuclear energy sector
everything is different?
I can only put the official well documented numbers together
and make the point
to do it again:
1) the nuclear power plants world wide are old and replacement is far behind
2) mining has stopped in many countries. Most uranium users have mostly no uranium
left on their territories.
3) the USA has so far failed to bring up mining again and is at 10% now of what it was 30 years ago!
4) hopes for fueling future new reactors in China and India are based on the good will of the USA and Russia
who would believe that this hope is justified and on what reason?
5) Western Europe (read the Euratom document I posted) apparently has already made the decision
about the slow decline! -30% within the next 15 years!
the long term buying will determine future investments also
but if Europe has made a silent decision already (1/3 of the world nuclear power plants are in Europe!)
the signals are clear.
6) populist ignorant leaders are needed in order to find a responsible.
Thus one needs to claim that the decline is the fault of greens, stupid others
but not the problem of the nuclear industry itself.
For oil drummers this should sound familiar for the problems in the oil sector!
Its the fault of Arabs, left wing nationalists, russians (ex communists) , Chinese who want more of the cake
or big oil companies but not of the people who are using too much oil
Michael
ps EP
it is not a claim that first fuel of a 1 GWe power plant requires 500 tons of natural uranium
and that 170 tons are roughly exchanged every year. Just a fact!
and so on
As far as I can tell..
(1) - Yes, we know. Not sure how relevant it is to keep making this point.
(2) - This is a simple function of the oversupply of cheap uranium for the past few decades. You could mine uranium at an energy profit in many countries right now.
(3) - See above. If the US government decided to offer a floor price of $250/lb for uranium produced on US territory this would be a different story.
(4) - No, they are not.
(5) - The main signal from Europe is that nuclear power is the only way we can demonstrate large reductions in GHG emissions.
(6) - The combination of lassie-faire economics, cheap natural gas and the greens have stopped nuclear power, yes. What has oil got to do with this?
Speaking as a geologist, I'd say the difference between Uranium and Oil supply is that Oil is freakish; most conventional oil is found in the biggest fields and there is a clear ERORI cutoff for lower grade resources. Uranium is more like a conventional mineral in that the quantities available in low grade deposits are larger, and the EROEI cutoff is at very low concentrations, especially if the resource is fully utilised through breeders.
for 1) don't know how old you are but aging without replacement has some obvious and relevant effects.
just as a fact since 2008 not a single new power plant has been connected to the grid but some have
stopped.
2) so why does the uranium output from Canada fall?
3) oh now you ask for 250$ per pound
why, isn't the amount which can be mined with great profit and for the current price of more than 100$/pound
already a good profit? And is energy independence a goal since at least 30 years in the USA
so why did nobody have the idea to subsidize? sounds like a good idea to me
you know these bad russians ...
4) China and India are not hoping for the good will of Russia and USA military uranium
well on what good will do they hope?
5) the main signal from Europe?
well as I said the real signal from Europe.. why don't you look into the Euratom
supply manual I posted?
Otherwise the main signal for Europe and co2 emissions
as far as I can see it .. the main message is the (soon) falling imports of Gas and Oil
combined with a decline of the little remaining resources
and yes that message is not popular!
(6) - The combination of lassie-faire economics, cheap natural gas and the greens have stopped nuclear power, yes. What has oil got to do with this?
are you sure about that statement?
I can always read that nuclear kwhe are much cheaper better cleaner etc..
strange why do people not understand this?
What oil has to do with it?
Well as a geologist perhaps you can tell us how much (the fraction)
uranium comes from the single largest mine
and how much oil in respect from the single largest oil field.
you can add the next few mines
and compare this with the oil sector.
michael
ps.. What data do you have which support the statement (may be the breeder discussion we can leave for the
final chapter) . I know the famous paper (at least what is written about it. but have a look at the abstract
and the comment about the validity ..)
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6665051
your quote:
Uranium is more like a conventional mineral in that the quantities available in low grade deposits are larger, and the EROEI cutoff is at very low concentrations, especially if the resource is fully utilised through breeders.
I think much of the discussion has focused on the current low uranium production, and the fact that if things aren't improved soon, there will be a shortfall by 2013. However, as far as I can see, production is ramping as we speak. In 2007 and 2008, uranium production increased by 2000 tonnes each year, but it seems these figures will be dwarfed by increases in 2009 and 2010, as considerable mining capacity is coming online:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/section.aspx?fid=796
It seems to have been Rabbit lake being mined out, and a temporary shortfall for McArthur. But Cigar Lake among other new mines are expected to increase production quite a lot.
The current price is lower. Spot market prices aren't used much.
I guess US stockpiles (military and civilian) are deemed quite adequate.
None, I guess. They are relying on for-profit operations.
The Greens have done a good marketing job. Also, NG and coal is quite cheap also, if you don't care about externalities.
You cite a good paper yourself. The case is pretty strong.
sorry I wanted to write
kg instead of pounds my mistake!
>why, isn't the amount which can be mined with great profit and for the current price of more than 100$/pound
The current price is lower. Spot market prices aren't used much.
********************************************************************
you write:
>you cite a good paper yourself. The case is pretty strong.
I asked if you have any evidence.
The paper formulates an interesting hypothesis (with some interesting remarks)
thus what are the data which support this thesis?
(we are now almost 30 years later!
For the "greens" and similar do you really believe that they are so strong?
Why didn't a much much stronger movement not stop the Iraq war?
and yes what high external cost of natural gas are you talking about?
I doubt that you accept the numbers from the Stern report
so what are your numbers?
michael
What are the data to contradict the thesis, 30 years later? Scientific theories that hold for so long usually are quite accurate. But I guess this is more of an academic issue anyway. If we scale conventional tech to dominate electricity generation, uranium will get rather expensive quite soon. But then breeders will compare favourably, and if we do those, fuel won't be a problem for centuries. We don't really have to know if we can fuel breeders for millions of years - such an outlook is meaningless. We shouldn't shoot for more than 50 years at most.
I was talking about Europe, mainly.
AGW. I don't have any numbers on this. Btw, I don't have much against NG at this time, but I would like to see us phasing out coal and trying to avoid oil sands.
The paper from 30 years ago formulates a hypothesis.
If you can't find any data which support it well bad luck.
As I said in another post
it took a long time to accept that the Vatican was not the center of the universe
and that Darwin had some good points about evolution.
you need more?
ok from my own field
1) Neutrinos are mass less
was accepted for 50 years perhaps now we have enough evidence
to reject the idea.
I have seen fundamental fights about why these experiments
were wrong
2) Supersymmetry
since 30 years a nice(?) hypothesis
but no evidence so far!
i could add more but I guess thats enough for now!
michael
ps.. the greens in europe?
As far as I know they are tiny
with little influence in most countries.
the didn't manage to stop any construction which was really wanted by
governments and the industry
yes the german fast breeder story Kalkar
but who stopped it really?
I remember the large and violent manifestations about the Brockdorf power
plant near Hamburg.
the effect was it happened and produces "happily" lots of TWhe for Hamburg.
for the other one Kruemmel
smaller protest, strong evidence for increase leukemia in children nearby
(effect is still small compared to car accidents agreed)
what happened
nothing the reactor functioned over the years
just until the moment that a small unimportant incident 2 years ago
put if down.
Why? bad management and perhaps some unknown hidden things
who knows
but it is still down!
michael
The original article writers had supporting data in the form of uranium mining data and average amounts in certain types of rock, such as granite. If you can't find any opposing data, well bad luck.
I think uranium prospecting and assessment is fairly easy compared to neutrino mass measurements.
They are tiny but due to proportional parliamentarism, they have often been able to participate in governing coalitions and they always demand nuke phase-out. For instance, they have been a governing party from 1998-2005 in Germany. In my own country, Sweden, the socialist party actually sacrificed the two modern reactors in Barsebäck to secure the support of the Greens. Also, since Greens draw voters from mainly big socialist parties, such parties have adjusted their agendas to accomodate green views.
>The original article writers had supporting data in the form of uranium mining data and average amounts in certain types of rock, >such as granite. If you can't find any opposing data, well bad luck.
There are two statements in the article
the first one is almost "trivial"
between high or grade and average crust grade and the huge amount of crust
one can expect that huge amount of uranium exist.
the second one is the one that matters and it less clear and unproven!
that much more uranium can be extracted if one is willing to pay a higher price!
it depends on many other things as has been pointed out in the abstract!
>I think uranium prospecting and assessment is fairly easy compared to neutrino mass measurements.
but what about extracting it? Cigar Lake seems to be even more behind the schedule
than our LHC.. both were supposed to start in 2006
now we are for 2009/10 and the Cigar Lake not before 2012!
for the greens and their influence (even though I think it is largely exaggerated)
do you believe that these green ideas will disappear or become stronger?
in case they become stronger (which seems likely)
your nuclear future would change?
I think the case for enough uranium reserves for the near-to-medium term is solid, as does the industry. I can live with you believing otherwise.
About Cigar Lake - that's an unusually tough environment - but also extreme concentrations of uranium. They'll get to it eventually.
The green ideas will likely become stronger over time, but:
1. Green isn't as prominent in the US and even less in the Asian countries that are currently driving the renaissance.
2. Green loses to need. If we ever get a fossil fuel crunch, people will accept anything to keep BAU.
3. As Chernobyl gets farther away in time and significant AGW gets closer, nuclear will increasingly be accepted as the greener alternative.
4. Westinghouse and Areva seems poised to create cheap, dependable, safe nuclear power. The current renaissance itself will create a momentum that will be hard for governments to ignore.
5. I wind and solar to not become as cheap as the new nuclear.
6. I also expect these intermittent sources to hit grid integration walls in different regions during the next 10 years.
6. I also expect these intermittent sources to hit grid integration walls in different regions during the next 10 years.
Starting 'yesterday' as monopolistic energy firms hammer at legislatures and regulators to make their century plus stranglehold on electrical generation the only path to the future. Colorado's Xcel shelved its surcharge for business and residential rooftop solar generation after the public screamed and democrat Gov. Ritter pressured it. Guaranteed their next attempt will have considerable pressure greasing the most influential least affected by public outcry wheels first. Monopoly/oligopoly types don't generally respond in a constructive manner when defending their turf.
I also expect these intermittent sources to hit grid integration walls in different regions during the next 10 years.
We've talked about a "wall" at 20% kwh market share. That's an overall market share, not a regional level. Look at France and Denmark, which rely on their neighbors.
For more, see your conversation with me and E-P elsewhere in this post.
I have to say, I'm impressed that you feel that wind can get to 20% in only 10 years - wouldn't you agree that says something about the relative swiftness with which wind can be installed?
sorry forgot
yes right the discussion should foccus on the points raised in my two papers!
the WNA list is interesting as they "forgot" to include the not so good looking news from Cameco Canada!
for Cigar lake lets see when it comes online. For now it is not before 2012
and this also seems rather unlikely.
can you explain what you mean by a "temporary shortfall of the McArthur mine?
It seems to go down every year now since 2006 no?
First half 2009 were just reported and they are lower again!
otherwise what is you prediction for the mining 2009 result
I made mine in the paper.
Official numbers so far from Kazakhstan are impressive
lets see the end of the year result!
michael
No, it has operated at licensed capacity, 8500 tU, since 2002, but has had shortfalls in 2003 and 2008, probably due to production glitches. In 2009, it is expected to be allowed to produce more, which would be rather pointless if it couldn't do that.
I don't know - I just see capacity increases everywhere, but I have no idea where it will end up. In this economic climate, with lower metal prices all around, efforts may well be postponed a year or two. But I'm positively not worried about nukes running out of fuel, that's for sure.
*No, it has operated at licensed capacity, 8500 tU, since 2002, but has had shortfalls in 2003 and 2008, probably due to production *glitches. In 2009, it is expected to be allowed to produce more, which would be rather pointless if it couldn't do that.
ah good to know! maximum production was during the good times 7200 tons!
are you sure about the 8500 tons uranium and not the U3O8
(maximum prod was 8492 tons in these units!)
but if right, you have another proof that capacity is always larger than reality!
thanks
michael
Right, my figures was U3O8, thanks for pointing that out. They have had a license for a maximum of 8500 tons U3O8, and have produced this amount since 2002, with two short-fall years. They have requested to get a higher license and it seems they will get it.
It would help if you would allow such discussion by using public sources (not the current edition of the Red Book, which is not openly available and thus cannot be used to check your claims), and if you would actually discuss matters instead of acting offended.
You should have noticed that I quoted references of your own footnotes back to you. If you don't think the source is credible, you should not cite it. I have cited the Energy Information Agency, which is a public source. You have not tried to dispute the validity or relevance of any data from either the EIA or world-nuclear.org brought up to argue against your claims. You have not quoted relevant data to clarify your claims when they were overbroad, nor have you responded when others questioned your interpretation of the data.
You have acted as if skeptical questions are an affront to your dignity, not just to me, but to advancednano and others. You have made grossly inaccurate claims about batteries. You compounded this with irrelevant references to 30 years past, when the world situation (especially Chindia) has obviously changed radically. I could go on and on about Chapter I, but I'll stop here. You wonder why you are questioned aggressively about this? I suspect that you would too, if you thought that someone was insulting your intelligence. That's what I think, and I'm not alone.
If you build your thesis on several questionable assumptions which do not appear to be true in practice, you can expect to be questioned aggressively and even treated dismissively. I have told you before: pleasing you is not our job.
I recall several people laughing at the circular nature of your argument about mining capacity in Chapter I. For instance, you said that mining activity was low (in the face of what is obviously slack demand due to conversion of weapons material to fuel), then claimed this low level of mining activity implies that a supply crisis was imminent. You also dismissed the Red Book numbers on mining capacity of various nations (after pointing to it as an authoritative source). Nowhere did you admit that mining activity might pick up as demand increased and the Megatons to Megawatts program wound down. Even if we assume the full difference between Red Book demand figures (66,500 tons) and the low end of Red Book mining capacity (54,000 tons) must be made up by new mines, it is only 12,500 tons per year. The production from United States ISL mines alone is about 1/3 of this figure, and the spare capacity is roughly 1/8. The USA could deal with a large fraction of this without breathing hard.
You had the chance to clarify and justify your claims back in the previous discussion. As I recall, you acted as if questions were wounding your pride rather than treating them as opportunities to make matters clear to a skeptical audience hungry for information.
We looked at what you wrote. We also noted that you take the Red Book as gospel when it suits you, and dismiss it when it doesn't (e.g. "In fact, the data on uranium mining and the large import dependence for several large uranium consuming countries undermine strongly the widespread belief that uranium resources are plentiful and that uranium exploration and mining costs are only a minor problem for nuclear energy production"). You ignore the fact that the high rates of uranium imports are a matter of disarmament policy, and uranium prices remain low (which they would not if there was an actual supply crisis). What's one to make of this?
I used your 170 ton/year figure, and the difference between 260 tons and 500 tons for the starting load is down in the noise. I may have made an arithmetic error previously, but the 3.5 million lb/a of unused ISL capacity in the USA could provide the starting fuel load for all 20 new US reactors in the planning stage in a few years. Since much of this uranium will not be needed until well after your 2015 crunch time, even that's not an issue.
The difference between 260 tons and 500 tons NU to start is down in the noise. 170 t/a over a fleet of 104 reactors is ~18000 t/a; starting another 20 reactors over 10 years is just 1000 t/a. Unused ISL mining capacity in the USA alone in 2008 was 1750 short tons of yellowcake; if that capacity was actually needed, why was it idle?
You have also failed to address my documented critiques regarding the feasibility of re-enriching tails given the massive surplus of US enrichment capacity. I think we can agree that ISL has minimal effects on communities and re-enrichment of tailings has approximately zero, so we can get right back to the amount of resource available. If the USA (or others on the USA's behalf) is using ~18000 t/a of NU to make ~2000 t/a of EU, the difference is ~16000 t/a of tails. Relatively little of these tails is used for other purposes (the claimed amount of DU ammunition used in the Middle East is in the hundreds of tons total), so we can assume that at least 50% of these tails remain in inventory. Over 20 years, this 50% would come to 160,000 tons of DU. The world supply would probably come to 4x or so that amount, more if you assume less of the DU being converted to other uses.
I gave you a spreadsheet which allows you to calculate the SWU requirements of enrichment given the assays of the input, product and tails. (You showed no ability to calculate this yourself, and didn't thank me or even acknowledge it.) You can make different assumptions about the U235 assay of the existing tails and see how much NU could be replaced by the re-enrichment of the DU inventory given those assumptions. This IS the chapter on secondary resources, but you passed over the crucial questions:
You don't just fail to address these questions in your chapter, you avoid them in the discussion. Why? Would they force you to change your conclusion? It may not be your conscious intent to only see what supports the conclusion of an imminent uranium fuel crisis (and stalling of the LWR industry), but that's what it looks like.
look
if you would be honest and if have read my paper you would have seen this paragraph in my paper
Its all there! But for one reason or another you did not.
Thus you have ignored this or you have not read the paper!
thus put the mirror in front of you.
do you understand the difference between theoretical large quantities and real capacities?
concerning the Red Book 07 and some previous ones
you again demonstrate your arrogance and have not read in the reference I provided
that you can use "google books" to find the book
and all the data you need.
use google books and
Uranium 2007 resources demand and production
and you get all what you need.
you better start reading now!
its a long and interesting book!
michael
Whoops, you have me there; I just hadn't read that far. I had the post open in two tabs, with one for the text proper, and I was commenting on each part in turn; when it was published I immediately got overwhelmed by the discussion and never got back to the post itself.
Still, the 1.8 million tons is a red flag. Why is Russia not delivering more re-enriched fuel? Obviously, it is not profitable. Why isn't it profitable? Either their enrichment capacity is fully subscribed with NU, or the price of LEU isn't high enough to make it profitable. Do we have any reason to believe Russian enrichment capacity is fully used?
You didn't address the USA's surfeit of enrichment capacity. That's 11.3 million kg-SWU/year of which only a small fraction is being used; it's expensive to run (gaseous diffusion is an energy hog), but it's there. If there was a shortage of LEU and NU but a large amount of spare SWUs, reasonable electric costs and 1.8 million tons of DU available, one would expect the SWUs to be employed to re-enrich the DU.
We have the SWUs, the DU and the electricity. Judging from the price of uranium there is no shortage of NU, and the behavior of the industry doesn't support the thesis of a shortage of LEU.
again you didn't read to the end
the USA is mentioned as well
this is the official declaration from the USA correspondent to the IAEA
it seems (or what the UN people made out of it)
is this spare capacity really operational?
at least the UXC and others seem to have doubts
but you certainly know this all as you have the insider information
so please give us the details of this secret information
which is not given to the UN people.
(you do not risk much who will find you ..)
michael
ps for the Red Book how is your reading going?
If the USA is looking at a shortage of enrichment capacity, this is now supported by government policy; the Obama administration refused to guarantee loans for a centrifuge-enrichment plant in Piketon, OH. If the USEC's GD capacity is not fully operational it may mean that a lack of enrichment capacity isn't an accident, it is government policy. (There is no strategic advantage to be gained by this. There is plenty of gas centrifuge capacity in the world, including some the USA would love to shut down. The world supply of LEU does not appear to rely much on what the USA does. However, there may be domestic political advantages to be had.)
I have no inside information, but I'm not the only one who can see that your thesis doesn't add up even given your own numbers. Take this from the post itself:
This is grossly inaccurate. The US inventory of actual used uranium (spent fuel) was about 47,000 tons in 2002, and at about 2200 t/yr it would be roughly 60,000 tons today; the world inventory would be roughly 4x this much, around 240,000 tons. This quantity of "used uranium" obviously includes several very different things under the same heading:
Even in the short term, we've seen that bulk of this "used" uranium (DU) can in fact yield a substantial amount of new LEU fuel if that is necessary. It's not like this is oil, hidden in the ground with its owners lying about their reserves; this is stuff that was mined years ago and is sitting in warehouses. When you claim an imminent LEU supply crisis based on these numbers, we have every reason to dismiss the claim as unfounded. Given that there are many who would make such a claim on the basis of their politics, we have even more reason.
That's reversing the burden of proof. You have asserted a LEU supply crisis based on numbers from the Red Book. I have shown that the numbers you have given are not sufficient to prove your case. I'm willing to be convinced, but you will have to find data which actually supports your claims unambiguously.
Having read this link, it is cause for concern. If the 30% figure takes in account the prime mover's efficiency for the generation plant then it may not be far off the mark, but this is far from clear in the post.
Actually, I stayed a couple of weeks a few blocks away from those uranium tailing piles when I was mountain biking in Moab in the spring. The tailing piles are right on the outskirts of the town. What I found interesting is that the uranium refinery just piled the tailings on the banks of the Colorado river without worrying about what would happen if there was a hundred-year flood on the river.
What would happen is that the uranium waste would end up in the water supplies of the good people of Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Southern California, which I'm sure would distress them.
It doesn't seem to bother the people of Moab, though. The uranium trucks used to drive bumper-to-bumper down the main street of Moab, dumping uranium ore onto the street every time they hit a bump, but the people made a lot of money from mining uranium, they now are making a lot of money from the cleanup (see below), and all the old uranium exploration roads have created a thriving mountain-biking industry in the area.
The interesting thing is that, while the original refinery processed about $64 million worth of uranium, the cost for the cleanup is estimated at $900 million and rising steadily. This kind of fails the cost-benefit analysis. The uranium mining in Utah never was economic - it was done due to ridiculous levels of federal subsidies - and once the subsidies ended, so did the mining. Only the cleanup remains.
There's certainly not much uranium left in Utah after all that mining. Any ore deposit big enough to find with a Geiger counter has been mined out. Some of the mines were only about the size of one old tree (the uranium tended to concentrate in petrified wood.)
True right now people in the region do not care a lot.
That's what I noticed.
But eventually people will be forced to care about it.
The uranium mining legacy
is not really the point of the article,
but certainly important in order to understand the real uranium mining costs.
Future generation will pay like for many other things we enjoy doing
(just think about the 10000 billion dollar debt).
the ``Profit now pay later" policy.
michael
I would like to second this comment, especially the part about cleanup costs exceeding the benefits derived from the mining.
The following quotes from Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse," simultaneously expand on this idea while revealing the downside to limited liability corporations and the drive - often within individuals but particularly under capitalism - to externalize costs whenever possible:
It seems to me that both mining cleanup operations and waste handling is typically overdone by one or two orders of magnitude. There are no real cost-benefit analyses done - politicians just throw taxpayer money at problems that the public is worried about, or they impose overly strict regulations that drive up costs unnecessarily.
"Overly strict" ?
By whose metric ? By what value system ?
Alan
Governments have never found it difficult to fill nuclear plant resident inspectorships. Often these people's families, and always and especially they themselves, are in the way of whatever harm the plants might do.
If it were just as easy to get civil servants to accept long-term assignments patrolling up and down gas pipelines, seeking to prevent the next few Ghislenghiens, Skikdas, and whatever other major recent gas disaster names I'm not remembering right now, that would be a sign that nuclear power regulation was not too strict.
(How fire can be domesticated)
The residents, perhaps? Would they rather take the money and use it for other purposes, or would they rather have the clean-up done, if they had a choice?
The Moab population referenced above by RockyMtnGuy, for instance, is 4779, and somebody has decided to spend "$900 million and rising" for clean-up. That's $188,000 per capita.
Or you may have a more global outlook: Say that they would have spent $10 million in clean-up where it did the most use, and then, for instance, spent the rest of the money on traffic safety at optimal places in Utah. Would that have resulted in more lives saved? How many fatal cancers were prevented by the marginal $890 million spent?
Jeppen,
In my humble opinion a little of that money could be far better spent fencing the area off and erecting skulls/crossbones.
The rest of it should have gone to buying some critical watershed with important ecOlogical and recreational uses that could also supply clean water to downstream towns,or in some similarly more useful way conducive to the preservation of the environment.
But the decisions in such cases are either made or forced by the green nutcases.They are far more interested in power,revenge,and self justification than they are in cost effective stewardship of the environment.
The billion dollar cleanup,which in times such as these should not be a high priority,will be used to prove that nuclear power is a BAD,BAD,PUPPY!!!
MEANWHILE,back at the COAL MINES,coal is being dug and burned by the MILLIONS of tons,releasing far more deadly pollutants and more radiation on the public by several orders of magnitude than the nuclear power industry.
But explaining this to the average greenie is no easier than explaining evolution to a third grade dropuot Baptist preacher.
There are several kinds of religion not normally recognized as such with numerous followers these days.
As Lord Chesterfield said,when people stop believeing in god,that does not mean that henceforth they believe in NOTHING.
Well, as I was trying to point out with the quotes I used from "Collapse," the residents themselves often end up wishing that the mining had never been done in the first place and that somebody else had had the "pleasure" of operating and reclaiming a mine.
This is, of course, because the communities in question almost never see a net benefit from the mining in the long run; sure, they get some jobs for a while, but the aggregate incomes and taxes often don't equal the eventual cleanup costs, regardless of the type of mine in question. If the mining companies themselves had to internalize the costs of the damage they caused, it might not be so bad, but instead they just declare bankruptcy or deny their responsibilities and leave it for taxpayers to deal with.
Another point is that spending a reduced amount (e.g. your hypothetical $10 million) probably isn't going to do much of anything (i.e. groundwater will still be polluted so that people can't drink it, use it, etc.). Restoring the site costs what it costs and I seriously doubt that the government is cleaning it up to higher standards than the residents themselves would prefer.
I'm CERTAIN the government is cleaning up to higher standards than the residents would prefer, if they could have the money instead. But as the government is cleaning up for free, there is no limit on the demand of clean-up, and the residents will always be unhappy.
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
You're correct in asserting that since the local residents aren't paying the full cost of the cleanup their demand will exceed what it would be if they had to pay for it all themselves. However, the residents didn't make the mess, mining companies did and then reneged on their responsibilities altogether; this is important, so let's keep it in mind.
Furthermore, it's not like residents would just receive all the money from the Superfund used on some local cleanup; they would get to keep their portion of state and federal taxes, but that's nowhere near as large as you make it sound because the federal Superfund expenses are collected at the federal, not state level. (E.g. $900 million / 300 million people = $3; whoop-dee-doo!)
In addition, since we're playing H. economicus here, why would politicians spend more money than they have to on cleanup when they could use it to give tax breaks to their political donors instead? We all know that in American politics it's money and cronyism that gets you elected after all.
Finally, the residents have to drink that water; if it's polluted, they get sick, their crops wither and their animals die. People don't just want, but *need* clean water as a prerequisite for life. You simply assert that cleanup is done to orders of magnitude greater than necessary without any citation of supporting sources. Show me one scientific article - not funded by the mining industry - that concludes this. As Jared Diamond notes in his book, most of the time these sites simply go without any reclamation at all, so the need for Superfund support is, I would guess, orders of magnitude greater than the funds available. What sense is there in cleaning up some sites orders of magnitude better than needed when there are potentially orders of magnitude more sites needing cleanup?
Adrynian,
The distribution of tax money is a very hit andd miss affair,and the cleanup IS what lots of money donors or coalitions of donors want.MY point is that the law of diminishing returns is applicable to the cleanup.
Of course if I lived there personally and were paying roughly only one three hundred millionth of the costs I would insist on a state of the art job myself,but that's not good sense for the body politic.
If you can save a dozen lives over the next twenty years by rebuilding a cloverleaf for ten million bucks or a hundred by hiring more traffic cops with the same money to get drunks off the road,I say hire the cops.
Now as to downstream water pollution ,in this case I have no data,but my position is that if it is up significantly,the cleanup needs to address that issue.Future miners should have to post bonds that will cover such costs if necessary,and if the bonds are not available/ unaffordasble ,then there should be no mineing.
Unless perhaps the situation becomes really desperate,as has been judged to be the case with the COAL INDUSTRY,and a partial cleanup is deemed satisfactory.Ar least all the hillbillies in West Virginia will soon have lots of nice flat land where thay can play football or even farm if they can haul in some topsoil.Grass and timber does grow fairly well on most of the mountian top sites when the mining is done according to current standards.
Rebuilding a landscape to original and rebuilding houses at extraordinary expense right now is insanity.
Such thinking once established and incorporated into the decision making process leads to absurdities.Suppose we tried to restore West Virginia to her original wild and wonderful condition?
I am highly sympathetic to the green movement in general but econuts have held up renewable energy progress to a great degree themselves by focusing on minor losses of habitat and wildlife while retarding construstion of renewable energy facilities that will SAVE far more habitat and wildlife,albeit in different places.
That cleanup money could buy perhaps as much as a hundred thousand acres of privately held land well worth inclusion in our parks system and overall, the environment would be in much better shape.
Incidentally I have read Diamond exhaustively and regard him as an intellectual giant,and his work is a a major part the foundations of my world view.
But he can't change the law of dininishing returns. If I had his phone number I would discuss this with him.;-)
Actually, they did, b/c the residents were the workers at the mine, right?
No, they wouldn't, but that's beside the point.
Well, in that case no single federal spending account is a problem, b/c it is always quite small per capita. But they do add up.
Well, politicians are known to make laws that are costly. It's not their money, after all.
Nonsense. The city may get an extra human and an extra domesticated animal cancer per 10 years or so. (I just chose an arbitrary number, so I won't "prove" it. If that does not suit you, you can start by showing us the background radiation levels before and after clean-up-efforts in the region.) The crops will NOT wither.
Oh, the drama.
Do you want sources to the population count or to the $900 million? These numbers are all you need to draw the conclusion, right?
And that is probably rational.
You seem to have a lot of faith in politics and beurocrats. My argument is that the cost-benefit analyses have not been done, or aren't used to make the best use of money. You are asking why and my answer is that I do not know.
Perhaps it's worth pointing out that what we're talking about here is radon gas. The mine tailings are similar in their radioactivity to ordinary crushed granite, with the same level of radiation hazard. They were seen by the residents at the time as good fill material for house foundations. They would be, too, except for the problem of radon accumulation in tightly closed houses -- Moab in winter. There's no problem with the tailings in the open air. And no problem in the river. It flows over equally radioactive boulders all along its course.
The "cleanup" is expensive, since its first step is demolishing or physically moving the homes that were built on the tailings.
Somebody must have gotten a sweet contract to do that, because my first idea would be to jack the houses up, remove the basements and construct sealed foundations out of modern materials. I bet ThermaSAVE would have been happy to bid on prefab materials for that one.
Was that comment directed to me? Because I was referring to the costs of cleaning up mines generally, not any particular mine or material. Radon gas isn't so bad, sure, but as Jared Diamond writes, most pollution from mines is in the form of various metallic acids that aren't so harmless.
It wasn't directed to you or the general comments you made about mine wastes. It was about the specific issue of uranium mine tailings in the area around Moab that Michael originally commented on. I remember it because my folks were still living in Colorado at the time the problem became a news story. I read about it in the Denver papers. A lot of locals considered it a prime example of an unnecessary government boondoggle. But because it was "radioactive waste", it was handled with full protocol for toxic wastes.
Mine cleanup is a complex issue. The degree of problem and the difficulty of remediation -- or the need for it in the first place -- depend on the type of mine and the minining practices employed. Rock tailings, like those around Moab that Michael was citing, are mostly a problem only to the extent that they scar the mountainside where they're dumped. Nothing grows on them for a hundred years or so, just like nothing grows on a natural scree slope above timberline. The nasty cases are where cyanide leaching was used for gold, and you have old settling ponds that hold some seriously toxic gunk.
I hear there are getting to be a lot of those around shale gas drilling sites as well.
There's also acid runoff from mine drainage. Oddly enough, it doesn't usually result from any contaminants left in the mine from the mining operation. It's formed naturally by the action of air and water seeping over exposed rock surfaces, when the rocks contain sulfate minerals. (Or is it sulfite? Don't remember. Ah, well, so it goes.)
Sulphide, with a 'd'.
Is Dr. Dittmar pro nuclear or opposed to nuclear?
If you could not figure this out so far
may be I managed to present an "objective" analysis.
regards Michael
My impression, quite frankly, is that you are starting from a strongly anti-Nuclear position and are more interested in fitting the facts to this than being objective. I believe you did an ASPO 6 presentation predicting shutdowns, quote:
http://ihp-lx2.ethz.ch/energy21/november2708.pdf
Only a “divine intervention” can prevent the uranium shortage during the
next few years! 5-10% of the reactors will be out of uranium by 2009/2010!
Not happened yet.
Nice. :-)
Well, there is not much point in discussing this post. It says that we're currently using reserves for nukes, and that this can't go on forever - but that's all well known. As Engineer-poet pointed out, it's easy to expand fuel extraction from primary sources. No problem, end of story.
(Btw - most of the new plants will be Chinese. Does anyone think they haven't thought about fuel availability?)
I actually think it IS possible for short term shortages to develop, but this is entirely the result of commodity markets being so short termist. If any national government wanted to ensure Nuclear fuel security, it could easily put out a contract (say $250/lb) for X amount of Uranium per year, I strongly suspect that the mining companies would bite their hand off, and they could secure supplies for decades, and furthermore pretty much everyone using Uranium could do this.
Good point. And yet another place where the marketplace fails miserably and the government has to step in when it really counts.
You don't even need government to do it, you can do it yourself at a profit. If you think uranium is undervalued, buy it or buy futures. The unused mining capacity of the USA last year was enough to provide the starting fuel load for at least 3 of the 20 reactors in the permitting or planning stages, so you CAN make a difference.
This is assuming that the nuclear industry itself hasn't already lined up its sources and this is already factored into today's prices. If that's the case, the brokers will make a killing at your expense. The question comes down to, do you believe Dittmar's projection enough to put your money into it?
What money?
Given most power companies sign onto long term fuel delivery contracts, and most fuel providers leverage against futures contracts along with production and delivery for several years down the road, I'd say that the people whos livelyhood depends on uranium avaliablity directly are allready aware. Given the futures market isn't exploding, I'd say that there is no imminent shortage of uranium.
All nonsense.
Irrefutable argumentation, there, jep.
Some things are just too nonsensical for me to really bother with. Perhaps I should shut up in those cases, but I don't, obviously. The short-sightedness of markets is really over-rated, and to my knowledge, reactors with access to the global uranium market have never stood still due to fuel shortage.
When the stock-market reacts heavily on quarterly results, some people draw the conclusion that the market is short sighted. However, the stock's price swings are typically not due to the current results, but due to a changed long-term outlook. Quite often, results are worse than expected and the stock soars, and the other way around.
Yeah, if you can explain short-term stock market swings, it would be a great enlightenment. For a while some of the odder jags made sense when I heard about the "buy on the rumor, sell on the news" dictum. But mostly it just seems random and bizarre.
So do you really think that markets are immune to bouts of irrational exuberance and other group think syndromes?
I think its fair to say markets have failure modes. They aren't intelligent, they're resource optimization strategies that produce far better results than beurocracies. Trying to outperform the market is like trying to win against the house. Sure the house loses sometimes.
But government has failure modes as well. Its best to stay clear of ideological rhetoric and realize these are simply tools. Markets deliver products at good prices so long as certain conditions of transparency and regulation to enforce honest brokering. They can spiral out of control and deliver poor prices from time to time, but then governments can deliver poor products as well. I'm sure we'll be in a rush to dump markets when we have omnibenevolant omniscient beurocrats to replace them. Untill then we'll muddle around in policy fiddling making things marginally better or worse than it is today.
Simply saying inane ideological exclamations condeming markets however, tars one as more than a bit foolish.
not yet!
so far only 1%/year less KWhe from nuclear electric energy (2006-2008)
2009 does not look great so far either.
but why don't you predict a trend yourself?
I am curious who will be more wrong!
michael
I don't make predictions where insufficient knowledge exists, since there isn't much point in doing so.
It is clear that nuclear power has been largely neglected in terms of R&D and long term planning. The same could be said of many areas of infrastructure in the post 1979 'neoliberal' era, which is defined by a running-down of existing capital goods (be it power production, oil production, water, soil, whatever) in the name of 'economic efficiency' and short term profit. You don't need an oil drum article, or series therof, to notice that.
Had nuclear power been properly developed instead of being effectively frozen in time, we would be moving towards a fully-nuclear electric grid powered by breeder reactors of one form or another right now; with almost zero CO2 and minimal waste (and minimal mining if any). This is still possible.
The only points I can garner from your posts is that old nuclear reactors are being retired faster then new ones commissioned (although this looks to be changing), and that we have a 'Just in time' delivery system for Uranium in which price spikes and spot shortages are technically possible. Just like for pork bellies. Neither point really has much to do with the future of nuclear power.
The real future of nuclear power is fundamentally down to politics; will politicians be sufficiently foresighted to put the investment guarantees in place to expand nuclear power now, or will it take blackouts and sky high prices before action is taken? I see no physical/scientific constraints on how far nuclear power can be expanded, only political ones.
If you prefer to call the short term nuclear future,
the topic of chapter I and II of my papers to be determined by political decisions
made some years ago one can agree perhaps about that.
(the real reasons for the political decisions might be interesting as well!)
But for now:
Do you agree with me about the consequences of them for the next 5-10 years.
a roughly 1%/year decrease in the number of TWhe up to 2013 and more after?
michael
Do you agree with me about the consequences of them for the next 5-10 years.
a roughly 1%/year decrease in the number of TWhe up to 2013 and more after?
I expect plant up rates and life extension to receive increasing attention. I also expect the operators of low capacity factor plants to implement the procedures and training techniques that have brought most U.S. plants up from 60% to 90% capacity factor. These effects combined with some new plants should more than compensate for closings.
Please add your list of
TWHe per year for the near future as well.
as I said it will be interesting to see who will be most wrong!
michael
ps.. now that most nuclear plants are at 90% efficiency
(mainly because one learned that it is better not to regulate their power perhaps)
it will be difficult to continue the increase
You are confusing efficiency with capacity factor (a chronic error, I might add).
Other posters have mentioned the power up-rates for existing plants. If the average thermal efficiency is increased from 33% to 37%, US nuclear generation would increase by approximately 100 TWh/yr with no change in capacity factor. Increased thermal power from reactors would push this up further, without any new plants.
Actually, technically, if thermal efficiency increased *without* an uprate that would be correct. But most 'new' nuclear energy in the last 10 years is by uprates, and uprates in fact do increase capacity. Which is why there are some plants that get 104% capacity ratings.
ok,
you want to be picky on a few words you have learned from the documents
fine with me! yes its called officially capacity factor! happy
what you talk about is thermal heat --> electric
or the carnot efficiency if you want to use correct wording! (try to be as correct as you want others to be
now for some normal use
you can define efficiency from the ratio up time / total time (and over a year)
but never mind!
I think most readers here understood!
michael
It is clear that nuclear power has been largely neglected in terms of R&D
Per elsewhere on Post #1, nuke R&D is *STILL* 51% of OECD energy R&D !
Nuke has hogged R&D for energy (90+% for many years) for half a century !
Nothing could be further from the truth !
Nuke builders committed hari kari. They destroyed their own industry by massive cost overruns, multi-year delays and Zimmer & TMI. The fault lies not in nuke critics, but the nuke building industry itself.
Alan
BTW, the first five new nukes in the USA will get the same incentives as wind.
This is a bit too little, it should be at least 75%.
Red tape was responsible for most of the delays and overruns, right? The two-step licensing process where you couldn't know if you'd be allowed to start a finished plant didn't really encourage investment.
don't know if you'd be allowed to start a finished plant
Build a low quality plant and you SHOULD be denied an operating license. Happened at Zimmer (rumor was one of the TVA plants had been given a warning).
A proper safeguard for the public.
Alan
I don't think it is worth it. The operators has every incentive to avoid accidents and the public weren't especially hurt by TMI.
Many operators have every incentive to maximize next quarter's profits.
Gulf States Utilities was one of several utilities that was on the brink of bankruptcy while operating a nuke.
Relying upon the "enlightened self interest" of utilities is NOT a viable safety program !
Alan
You are absolutely correct about the safety issue.If there is any one place in the world we need hard nosed safety regulators with no sense of humor and the authority to say "shut it down now" it's at a running nuke.
That's the only realistic way to prevent cutting corners to save money.
It's a lot cheaper to do everything right than shut down,even though doing it right can be expensive.
But still dirt cheap in a world short on oil that will see motor transport move to ng as the oil dries up.
In my not so humble common sense opinion ,any one who thinks that since it is now possible to build affordable ng trucks and cars that they won't be built by the tens of millions has his head up is ass-or else maybe he just believes in really good ,really cheap batteries.
I'll go with the ng scenario,as it allows bau.I can't see an otr truck running on batteries within any meaningful time frame,although it might be possible to load up a tractor(whch moves slow,needs tractive deadwieght,and seldom goes more than a mile or two from its nightly home) with a few tons of batteries-if we don't hit peak lead or lithium or whatever.
And no politician is going to have the balls to tell Joe sixpack that he can no longer buy a new f250 4by 4.It might at best be able to slap a sizable luxury tax and fuel tax on such vehicles. That luxury tax and fuel tax is a lot to believe in all by itself.
Natural gas will go thru the roof within a few years unless the downhill economic slide continues and although I don't foresee a hot economy ever again in my lifetime the world ain't LIKELY gonna ROLL OVER AND DIE any time soon,barring WW3.
TEOTWAWKI IS A POSSIBILITY,like a heart attack,not a foregone conclusion like death by old age.
Any nuke that is built now is sure to be a world class bargain later in a world of ever rising ff prices,assuming the uranium is there.
And the "real" price of nukes,as well as construction time, will fall a lot if designs are standardized,which seems likely.
You don't even need to build new cars. Any car driving on unleaded gas can also drive on natgas. This is what is done in Argentina. They buy American cars and modify them to cars driving on natgas (so-called nafta) using a $500 kit.
Of course, you give up a good part of the trunk, because that is where the nafta tank goes. Also, all of these cars have dual functionality, i.e., you start the car on unleaded gas (because the cold engine doesn't start so well on nafta), then you drive around for a minute or two, and then you switch over to nafta.
A tank of nafta gives you a range of about 120 km in Argentina. Thus, if you happen to run out of nafta before you arrive at the next gas station, you simply switch back to unleaded and continue to drive until you come across a gas station.
All gas stations in Argentina sell both unleaded and nafta. Of course, this is an investment decision that other countries would have to make if they wish to follow the Argentina model.
Also, the catalytic converter of these US-built cars is optimized for unleaded gas, and not for nafta. A catalytic converter for nafta would be about three times more expensive, because it takes about three times more precious metals (rhodium, palladium ...) to build catalytic converters that work correctly when you drive around on nafta. Argentina simply doesn't care. It's a huge country with few people in it ...
In Argentina, investing $500 in the conversion kit makes economical sense, because nafta is (in Argentina) about three times cheaper than unleaded gas per driven km, and so, everyone does it.
Francois,
I agree,but the conversion here is several times more expensive and therefore I foresee most of the ng vehicles here in the US being new ones as we don't yet have much of a retail ng fueling system and gasoline is still plentiful and cheap.
This situation will change soon,or I'm the one with my head up my ass.My wag is that flex fuel gasoline/ethanol /ng vehicles will be common in dealer showrooms within ten years or so.
Most likely heavy duty diesel/ng engines will start eating into the commercial diesel market first in a noticeable way,and the cars will follow.
Nope. I don't think so. Dual fuel unleaded/ng is a no brainer, because unleaded gas and natgas can coincide in the fuel injection system. Diesel/ng on the other hand is much more tricky, because mixtures of diesel fuel and natgas have a tendency to explode.
Bolivia is trying this. They sell a converter set for diesel engines to run on natgas also. However, I don't know much about how they solve the problem of avoiding explosions, and so I am a bit sceptical.
Francios,
When Catepillar and Cummins integrate the fuel systems on the drawing boards,there will be few if any problems.
The trucks come first because otr trucks are typically driven well over two hundred thousand miles per year for the first five years or so ,and a hundred thousand or more for another tewnty years at least.And such a truck gets anywhere from three to nine miles per gallons,depending on the circumstances.Further more they are serviced at least when new by real mechanics,not the high school drooputs commonly employed by car dealers and local garages.
The lifetime fuel cost SAVINGS are many times the lifetime fuel COSTS of an automobile DUE TO THE ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF FUEL USED BY SUCH TRUCKS.
I drove a big Catepillar truck on a construction job in the mid seventies that consistently used over a hundred and fifty gallons per shift,and it ran two shifts per day,six days a week.That truck is probably still running on a mining job someplace in the third world.
such a truck gets anywhere from three to nine miles per gallons,depending on the circumstances.
I believe Walmart plans to get 17 MPG with aggressive aerodynamic changes - once you get over 45 MPH, aerodynamics rule.
I suppose it can be done,especially if speeds can be held down and streamlining is really incorporated into the design.Plus Walmart trucks are probably not loaded so much by wieght as by volume limitations,thereby being a little light on the average to start.
Plus thier drivers are among the lowest paid and therefore it is easier for Walmart to economize on fuel at the exspense of drivers time.
Its an ambitius goal.
Ah, here's the quote from Engineer-Poet:
"Wal-Mart is looking to get 13 MPG out of its fleet of semis using improved tires, only one driven axle and full fairings from the cab to the box and under the trailer. That's better than some big SUVs."
So, 13 MPG, not 17. Still, not bad.
Both natural gas and LPG can be used to co-fuel a diesel engine via "fumigation" (introduction into the intake air). Here is a Louisiana state web page on the subject. One of the benefits is a large reduction in particulate emissions under high load.
If there is any one place in the world we need hard nosed safety regulators with no sense of humor and the authority to say "shut it down now" it's at a running nuke.
Mac, I agree with 99% of what you say, but you might consider this.
A friend, a senior mechanic at a major airline mentioned that he received his certification to taxi the aircraft. After an engine change he takes it out to the end of the runway and runs it up. He is a private pilot and flies an airplane of his own construction that requires far more skill than the airliners.
He said, “Do you know how easy it would be to roll onto the runway and take off?” I said, “Yes, do you know how many people you could kill with a 747 and a full load of fuel?” He said, “Maybe 50,000.”
I asked if he had to pass an FBI background check, no, a written psychological test, no, an interview with a psychologist, no. These are all things you need to work in a nuclear plant.
Modern nuclear plants are designed with negative temperature and void reactivity coefficients to make a Chernobyl like power excursion impossible. They have robust containment buildings, lacking at Chernobyl. Next generation plants have a core catcher that will contain and re-solidify a full meltdown.
If I were a terrorist loose in a nuclear plant I could kill a few people and damage some very expensive equipment, but I cannot think of any realistic way to kill people off site, can you?
Many other industries pose a greater hazard, think chlorine, MIC, LNG and biologicals.
This is often my point when I argue safety, while important, dominates far too much concern in discussions of nuclear power. When bananas are considered radiotoxic spills by LNT rules in nuclear power plants, its time to realise the door is made out of iron and start focusing on where walls are made out of paper.
Bill,I agree with all you say but neverthe less I stand my ground,and although I am no engineer or other professional in the energy or safety field,I have actually worked inside six different plants as a maintainence mechanic of one sort or another.
An individual with a grudge could not as you say cause a major accident but there is always a way to cut corners,and always somebody to figure out how.
I'm just an ok driver,and in a car someday I might cause an accident that kills say ten people if I hit a loaded van.
Your airline pilot is held to a very high standard because he may indeed kill thousands if he crashes.
A major nuclear accident could concieveably rupture a western style containment although this has never happened.If it does,nuclear power is dead in the west.
But even another accident of the TMI kind,which did no significant harm to any person or the environment could set the industry back another twenty years AGAIN.And for what it's worth ,I believe there would have been no TMI or Chernobyl accidents if the safety men I met otj had been on THOSE JOBS.
Example of a shortcut:People were hanging film in the containment about the pipes and valves near a steam generator(to be exposed by opening a shielded box with a robot and withdrawing a very hot source) to check lots of valves and pipes silmantaneously.Other people were working in other areas but not nearby.
Since I was known to be an asshole for doing it by the book,the engineer in charge put me in charge of making sure everybody else had time to finish thier jobs and evacuated the general area.Two supervisors on the film crew tried to get me,buddy buddy, to tell the other guys they had to leave cause they were holding them up.
Since I didn't work for them(half of the reason I was chosen for this temporary task) it was no problem for me to say no,but they got hot.I just kept saying nocando until I got the call from every body on my list that they were out and the confirmation call fron HP that they were out of the containment,by name and by badge number.
Of course the engineer waited for my call to ok the xray work.
Now I don't even know what the other guys were doing ,but it could have been important.
Maybe they were checking safety equipment,and maybe a mistake would have been made if I told them that by virtue of my tiny temporary authority they needed to hurry it up.
The amount of money that a running nuke brings in in an hour will pay for all kinds of doubly and triply redundant personell to make sure things are done right.
And when they close the big doors ard fire her up after a shutdown,she can stay on line for a year straight flat out,sometimes longer.Especially if everything was done right.
http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman03242009.html
People died--and are still dying--at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
That quickly proved to be false.
The public was then told the releases were controlled and done purposely to alleviate pressure on the core.
Both those assertions were false.
The public was told the releases were "insignificant."
But stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know---and STILL does not know---how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went.
Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas.
Official estimates said a uniform dose to all persons in the region was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. But pregnant women are no longer x-rayed because it has long been known a single dose can do catastrophic damage to an embryo or fetus in utero.
The public was told there was no melting of fuel inside the core.
But robotic cameras later showed a very substantial portion of the fuel did melt.
The public was told there was no danger of an explosion.
But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.
The public was told there was no need to evacuate anyone from the area.
But Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children. Unfortunately, many were sent to nearby Hershey, which was showered with fallout.
In fact, the entire region should have been immediately evacuated. It is standard wisdom in the health physics community that---due in part to the extreme vulnerability of human embryos, fetuses and small children, as well as the weaknesses of old age---there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found.
The public was assured the government would follow up with meticulous studies of the health impacts of the accident.
In fact, the state of Pennsylvania hid the health impacts, including deletion of cancers from the public record, abolition of the state's tumor registry, misrepresentation of the impacts it could not hide (including an apparent tripling of the infant death rate in nearby Harrisburg) and much more.
The federal government did nothing to track the health histories of the region's residents.
In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more.
A study by Columbia University claimed there were no significant health impacts, but its data by some interpretations points in the opposite direction. Investigations by epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing of the University of North Carolina, and others, led Wing to warn that the official studies on the health impacts of the accident suffered from “logical and methodological problems.” Studies by Wing and by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry official, being announced this week at Harrisburg, significantly challenge official pronouncements on both radiation releases and health impacts.
Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says:
“When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
Data unearthed by radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh, and statisticians Jay Gould (now deceased) and Joe Mangano of New York have led to strong assertions of major public health impacts. On-going work by Sternglass and Mangano clearly indicates that "normal" reactor radiation releases of far less magnitude that those at TMI continue to have catastrophic impacts on local populations.
Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating. Large numbers of central Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and who were exposed to nuclear tests in the south Pacific and Nevada.
A series of interviews conducted by Robbie Leppzer and compiled in a “a two-hour public radio documentary VOICES FROM THREE MILE ISLAND give some indication of the horrors experienced by the people of central Pennsylvania.
They are further underscored by harrowing broadcasts from then-CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite warning that “the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the atomic age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse.”
In March of 1980, I went into the region and compiled a range of interviews clearly indicating widespread health damage done by radiation from the accident. The survey led to the book KILLING OUR OWN, co-authored with Norman Solomon, Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters which correlated the damage done at TMI with that suffered during nuclear bomb tests, atomic weapons production, mis-use of medical x-rays, the painting of radium watch dials, uranium mining and milling, radioactive fuel production, failed attempts at waste disposal, and more.
My research at TMI also uncovered a plague of death and disease among the area's wild animals and farm livestock. Entire bee hives expired immediately after the accident, along with a disappearance
of birds, many of whom were found scattered dead on the ground. A rash of malformed pets were born and stillborn, including kittens that could not walk and a dog with no eyes. Reproductive rates among the
region's cows and horses plummeted.
Much of this was documented by a three-person investigative team from the Baltimore News-American, which made it clear that the problems could only have been caused by radiation. Statistics from Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture confirmed the plague, but the state denied its existence, and said that if it did exist, it could not have been caused by TMI.
In the mid-1980s the citizens of the three counties surrounding Three Mile Island voted by a margin of 3:1 to permanently retired TMI Unit One, which had been shut when Unit Two melted. The Reagan Administration trashed the vote and re-opened the reactor, which still operates. Its owners now seek a license renewal.
Some 2400 area residents have long-since filed a class action lawsuit demanding compensation for the plague of death and disease visited upon their families. In the past quarter-century they have been denied access to the federal court system, which claims there was not enough radiation released to do such harm. TMI’s owners did quietly pay out millions in damages to area residents whose children were born with genetic damage, among other things. The payments came in exchange for silence among those receiving them.
But for all the global attention focused on the accident and its health effects, there has never been a binding public trial to test the assertion by thousands of conservative central Pennsylvanians that radiation from TMI destroyed their lives.
So while the nuclear power industry continues to assert that "no one died at Three Mile Island," it refuses to allow an open judicial hearing on the hundreds of cases still pending.
As the pushers of the "nuclear renaissance" demand massive tax- and rate-payer subsidies to build yet another generation of reactors, they cynically stonewall the obvious death toll that continues to mount at the site of an accident that happened thirty years ago. The "see no evil" mantra continues to define all official approaches to the victims of this horrific disaster.
Ironically, like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island Unit Two was a state-of-the-art reactor. Its official opening came on December 28, 1978, and it melted exactly three months later. Had it operated longer,
the accumulated radiation spewing from its core almost certainly would have been far greater.
Every reactor now operating in the US is much older---nearly all fully three decades older---than TMI-2 when it melted. Their potential fallout that could dwarf what came down in 1979.
But the Big Lie remains officially in tact. Expect to hear all week that TMI was "a success story" because "no one was killed."
But in mere moments that brand new reactor morphed from a $900 million asset to a multi-billion-dollar liability. It could happen to any atomic power plant, now, tomorrow and into the future.
Meanwhile, the death toll from America's worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing “renaissance” hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.
Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by Westinghouse, still a major force pushing atomic power. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com
Nice conspiracy theory.
Nice conspiracy theory indeed.
If there were all these sick and dead people and deformed animals,etc,there must also be a few graveyards full of reporters who wwre murdered and done away with quietly to keep them from running thier pieces.
And then of course thier families were done in ,or bought off ,or......
And the CIA or the FBI calls on thier employers and tells them THEY ARE NEXT if they runm a story about the missing reporters.......
I do believe that there are quite a large number of hungry lawyers with teeth big enough to eat Goldilox in one bite in this country now,and then as well.
And there are dozens of doctors and insurance companies signing death certificates and paying off on policies,and clerks in courthouses collateing the data and sending it on it's way.
It's easy to take a few facts and spin them into another Da Vanci Code but it's not so easy to sell it to ME.
And then there is the fact that after Reagen left office ther have been some democrats in charge from time to time,who would LOVE to tar and feather both the right wing and the nuclear industry and run them out of town on a rail.
Try it as a novel ,it might just sell if you sub it out to a good writer.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. There are LOTS of negative events that regularly are suppressed because the knowledge thereof threatens one group or another — often the government.
The notion that facts are regularly hidden from interested parties is part of why the courts continually protect journalists to the extent they do in large part because said protection is enshrined in the constitution. In other words, to get at the truth was seen as valuable enough to afford constitutional protection by the drafters:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
From 2005 through 2007 I was a member of a group presenting "The State of the World" at a conference and one factor we reported on was corruption, which is really equivalent to "conspiracy" in that it is intended to remain hidden and it is a breach of integrity. There are many, many instances of groups of people breaking the law and then covering their tracks.
The U.S. currently ranks 20th out of 180 counties on the corruption perception index by Transparency International:
http://www.transparency.org/content/download/32776/502129
Read through their reports and it's easy to see that the world is FILLED with real conspiracies that are being uncovered all the time. We have given the job (in part) to the press to help bring them to light.
Here is an interesting post answering the question "What examples are there of 'conspiracy theories' that turned out to be true?"
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=468046
There are several juicy ones in there.
Again, thanks for educating me on TMI. My practice is to verify before I repeat something I've learned (and certainly before I go on stage and talk about it) but I'm inclined to give your report the benefit of the doubt given the sources you've cited.
jeppen clearly has no knowledge in this area so it's safe to ignore his comment.
Like the "conspiracy theory" about Imelda Marcos having many shoes, and it turned out she actually did have many shoes! Ok, now I believe in conspiracy theories. That post was really, really bad.
People died--and are still dying--at Three Mile Island.
teogawki, your reference has done an impressive job of combining the lies and distortions about TMI into one document.
According to anti nuclear folks the disposition of nuclear waste is one of our biggest problems. There is an ongoing pilgrimage of reporters with cameras to Chernobyl. Their videos always end with a shot of a portable radiation meter sitting in the grass downwind of the plant clicking furiously.
Where are those videos from TMI?
Precisely why is his evidence not enough? Isn't it likely that this sort of release of radiation won't provide what you are asking for and the story must be pieced together in a different way than Chernobyl?
My wife, who is is a public defender, all the time must defend clients using indirect evidence the prosecutors have provided. Often she loses based on that indirect evidence because, well, most of her clients are guilty as hell and the evidence is sufficient for a conviction. It is pure Hollywood that a conviction can't occur based on circumstantial evidence alone:
"Evidence can be divided into direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence proves the point without the need to draw any conclusions. Circumstantial evidence requires the jury to draw a conclusion that some relevant fact occurred...Circumstantial evidence may be used to establish any element of a crime."
http://www.riohondo.edu/LEO/AJ/AJ104/aj104u3.htm
If you insist on direct evidence, you are using a standard higher than our court system requires. If you pursue this line you are taking, it would indicate to me that you have lost objectivity in this conversation, which is the conclusion I've already drawn with Jeppen.
Precisely why is his evidence not enough? Isn't it likely that this sort of release of radiation won't provide what you are asking for and the story must be pieced together in a different way than Chernobyl?
anngel, No, in fact it is impossible. People have lived for generations in high radiation environments with no increase in cancer or mutations.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5631#comment-528295
So how does the much lower exposure from TMI produce death and destruction?
Radiation is GOOD for you.
Your closing statement at link was:
People have been living in these high radiation areas for generations. If LNT is valid why haven’t they been wiped out or riddled with cancer?
Because LNT would predict only somewhat higher levels of cancer, and much of that would be past reproductive age.
Much of Bangla Desh was well water with dangerous levels of arsenic. By your argument above, arsenic must not be a risk after all; just look at how many people are living in Bangla Desh !
All the proponents of this do NOT have a deep interest in biology, cancer research or public health, but are blinded by a devotion to nuclear power.
Alan
Alan, arguing the merits of LNT at the edge of the line is hardly productive. We take bigger risks every day crossing the street. Its not weather radiation hormesis is true or LNT is true or hey, quite possibly neither and theres simply a threshold below which there isn't any effect. Its simply that below this threshold its all statistical noise and is good as fiction so arguing about it or even making policy on it is a waste of time.
We have much larger measurable risks with mercury poisoning, but below certain levels it becomes statistically meaningless to attempt to quantify the risk.
This is nonsense. If there is semen in a rape case, for instance, then DNA matches all but decides the case. And we have recently seen a string of aquittals in old sentences based on DNA, right?
Few things are as easy to measure and fingerprint as radioactive releases, so this is a question of science and measurements, not of "circumstantial evidence". No way in hell could TMI be a killer without it being known.
Butterflies likewise are incredibly dangerous killers for their contribution to dangerous global weather patterns.
Well, then we disagree, I guess. Let's go my route, and then if there are two TMIs within 30 years, let's reevaluate.
No thanks, in case it is another Chernobyl, or worse.
BTW, there is *NO* better way to kill new nukes than another TMI (unless it is another Chernobyl).
Alan
Alan, thats simply impossible. You'd have to design a plant intentionally to make it worse than Chernobyl. I know you're freaking paranoid about nukes going bad but you had a giant graphite moderated reactor with a positive void coefficient and scram rods that actually had graphite risers that increased the reaction before shutting it down before even getting to the part where there wasn't any containment building or the part where the moderator catches fire and burns after the reactor hits 40GW without any cooling.
The only place there could be another chernobyl is in the old post soviet republics where they have some RBMK's they haven't retired yet. Those things aren't ever going to be built again.
Alan, thats simply impossible
It has been several decades since I studied the "Maximum Credible Accident"
The argument was that today's safety standards are excessive. So lets build some low quality nukes and see what happens.
One scenario; an "out of spec" earthquake coupled with loss of control (wiring severed between control room & reactor; almost happened during Brown's Ferry 1 fire).
Out of spec earthquake means either:
1) earthquake stronger than design,
2) movements do not correspond to design parameters despite earthquake being only XX strong
3) Lack of engineering review misses flaw in build (delta from design, happens all the time)
4) Flaw in engineering software allows faulty design
Say, slow leak in pressure vessel, crack in containment structure and several electrical fires (with some super heated steam leaks for good measure). Diesel tanks for emergency generators are leaking too. All with zero active wiring between control room and reactor. Imagine Mr. Murphy in control from there.
I have a fair degree of confidence with today's US nukes, and more with the next generation. But drop the safety standards and my confidence will drop with them.
Best Hopes for Ever Improving Safety standards,
Alan
You still cant get chernobyl level Alan. You can, if you align everything just right, you can have something bad. But then you're still limited to the maximum power of the reactor because the water is the moderator and its in its maximum critical state, unlike RBMK's. In an operating RBMK its not in its maximum critical state so you run the risk of power spikes because of voids, and then boom 40GW driving a steam explosion and a graphite moderator catching on fire.
Now you can paint a nasty picture, and if you align everything right with the winds dumping radioiodine all over the place with its associated thyroid cancers; In heavily populated areas you might even have much higher casualty rates, but then Chernobyl could have had the winds blowing strait at Kiev as well. But you cant have the huge explosive dispersion and burning graphite nastiness that an RBMK will bring you. If you want to argue that there's risks, fine. But a Chernobyl type accident in the west just isn't in the cards.
You still cant get chernobyl level Alan
Ok. let me see if I can convince you that it can.
From memory, both TMI & Chernobyl has relatively fresh fuel and were "mid-size" reactors. Let us suppose that the earthquake happened 18 days before scheduled refueling and in a reactor with twice the U-235 (perhaps higher enrichment or more tons of fuel). So x16 as many fission products, Pu, etc.
(You focus on spike peak power, I focus on fission byproducts as a risk factor).
Earthquake disrupts local communications. Inside containment quickly reaches 100+ C from steam leaks and electrical fires. Pumps turned off. Reactor vessel has small superheated steam leaks to keep from "blowing" immediately but raises temperature (i.e. weaken steel) in containment structure, which is itself leaking through small opening (say a door). Core begins to melt as top of core becomes exposed as water leaves via superheated steam, releasing volatile fission byproducts (say 1600% as many as Chernobyl had). Uranium begins to separate from zirconium & steel due to specific gravity in melt. Added energy from increased reactions at bottom of melt plus LOTS of fission decay heat as well, remember that this is old fuel).
Temps between containment & reactor vessel get hotter, enough to weaken steel. Finally melt of core weakens bottom of reactor vessel and a "steam boiler" explosion cracks bottom. This is enough to seriously breach earthquake and heat weakened containment structure and release all volatile fission products from damaged core, and all remaining core is damaged in "steam boiler" explosion.
Location and prevailing winds ? Significantly worse than those at Chernobyl. Earthquake damage limits efforts to reduce civilian exposure.
Oh, and Michael Brown's nephew is in charge.
Overall damage ? > Chernobyl
Remember, we had an earthquake as the stands were filling for a World Series game. Worst case does sometimes happen.
Alan
From memory, both TMI & Chernobyl has relatively fresh fuel and were "mid-size" reactors… So x16 as many fission products, Pu, etc.
From my memory the Chernobyl accident happened due to a botched experiment at the end of a scheduled run.
Finally melt of core weakens bottom of reactor vessel and a "steam boiler" explosion cracks bottom. This is enough to seriously breach earthquake and heat weakened containment structure and release all volatile fission products from damaged core, and all remaining core is damaged in "steam boiler" explosion.
Provide details of how this works. Chernobyl went to 100 time rated power which provided enough energy to blow the roof off a conventional building and eject 1/3 of the core. Even so, with an appropriately designed containment building Chernobyl would not have killed anybody.
Water moderated reactors shutdown when the water is ejected from the core. Reactor vessels are surrounded by several feet of steel reinforced concrete shielding. The buildings are equipped with redundant containment spray systems that contain chemicals that scrub the atmosphere of chemically active fission products like iodine. Gen III plants are passively cooled.
After a nuclear weapon goes off the resulting radiation comes largely from the short lived fission products. The majority of fission products have short half lives.
That is why Hiroshima and Nagasaki are less radioactive than Denver and it explains the logic of fallout shelters. Radiation levels fall of dramatically in the first hours and days.
When a reactor operates the short lived fission products begin decaying as soon as they are formed and approach equilibrium concentration within a few half lives. At end of core life there are more long lived fission products, but short and intermediate lived fission products, the vast majority, are in equilibrium soon after startup.
The most common iodine decay products are 135 (half life 6.6 hrs) and 131 (half life 8 days). These were in equilibrium at TMI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_product_yield
Iodine 129 (half life 15.7 million years) accumulates with time. Only one atom is produced for every 10 atoms of I 135 and the long half life results in a low dose rate.
Steel weakens dramatically with increased temperature. See World Trade Centers.
Without controls and without pumping, a conventional reactor will accumulate energy. A slow leak prolongs the time, allowing steel to weaken further till the accumulated heat energy (like Chernobyl, it just takes longer. Time replaces the power spike) cracks the reactor vessel. Steam that would have gone to the turbine is slowly going into the containment structure.
The containment structure has been damaged by the "out-of-spec" earthquake and then weakened by prolonged exposure to heat.
Iodine is the worst but hardly the only volatile (at elevated temperatures) and toxic fission product.
BTW, Bill, this was not addressed to you. You are incapable of being convinced of anything that questions nukes. You even picked up the "radiation is good for you" "theory".
It was addressed to Dezakin who "takes some convincing" but will sometimes come around.
Alan
The weakness does not occur until the temperature rise is equally dramatic (and you don't have to tell me, this happened in my back yard a few weeks ago). See this representative table of yield strength vs. temperature. Notice that it doesn't even start until 400°F, and strength is only down slightly at 800°F. If you think you are going to get the reinforcing steel in a concrete containment building up to 800°F in a steam-leak accident when the operating temperature of the reactor inside it was well below that, I would love to have some of what you're smoking to share next weekend.
Normal steam temps for nukes are (from memory) 300 C (wet steam), but in a PWR on the other side of the heat exchanger it is a bit hotter.
But in the example no heat is being extracted by the steam generators and there is no control over the reaction. The only heat loss is by two stage (& relatively small) leaks; Reactor Vessel > Containment & Containment > You & me. I suggested one door as the leak from the containment to the public. This release will create an asymmetric temperature profile (reactor leak on one side, twisted door on the other side will heat up one side of the containment more).
In addition I specified electrical fires inside the containment. Extra joules there.
An uncontrolled reactor stuck at operating settings with minimal heat extraction (plus plenty of heat from decay) sitting for several hours will get quite hot. Perhaps 3 to 4 GWthermal with (almost) no place to go ! 800 F is on the low end for the interior of the containment, especially if the vessel leak > containment leak.
There is significant thermal mass in the containment so time is also required to saturate it (and there will be a heat gradient across the containment, the steel on the outside will be cooler than on the inside. Containments I have seen put the concrete of the outside, so that will help insulate the steel and keep it hotter.
Alan
Alan, if you’re going to play nuclear engineer please get an introductory textbook and read it.
no heat is being extracted by the steam generators and there is no control over the reaction.
The control rods are held up by electromagnets. If any parameter goes out of limits the current is automatically cut off and neutron absorbing rods drop into the core by gravity stopping the chain reaction.
Any large break in the system would allow the water to flash into steam and be ejected. When the water flashes to steam the neutrons are not colliding with water molecules and slowing down which reduces their probability of causing a fission. The chain reaction fizzles out.
Pressurized accumulators automatically pump water containing boric acid into the reactor to cover the core. The boron absorbs neutrons and prevents a restart of the chain reaction even if the rods are still out.
I suggested one door as the leak from the containment to the public.
The doors are extremely robust, they are shut during normal operation and a pressure differential is maintained to detect any leak.
In addition I specified electrical fires inside the containment. Extra joules there.
As with all electrical installations power cables are protected by circuit breakers that will open under fault conditions. The amount of power required to run emergency equipment is relatively small.
An uncontrolled reactor stuck at operating settings with minimal heat extraction (plus plenty of heat from decay) sitting for several hours will get quite hot. Perhaps 3 to 4 GWthermal with (almost) no place to go !
Its not like a motorcycle engine with a stuck throttle. If the emergency protection system does not shut it down the operators will shut it down and if they do not shut it down the negative temperature coefficients will quickly shut it down.
Even if your scenario was possible it would be several hours before significant venting began. The short lived fission products would be largely decayed. Operators could vent the containment building through the attached building which would provide lots of surface area for chemically active fission products to plate out. These buildings are generally equipped with HEPA filtered vents to stop hot particles. They could turn on the sprinklers for additional scrubbing. The release offsite would be a tiny fraction of Chernobyl.
The control rods are held up by electromagnets. If any parameter goes out of limits the current is automatically cut off and neutron absorbing rods drop into the core by gravity stopping the chain reaction.
The "out-of-spec" earthquake could jam the control rods, the power on that circuit could stay on for "a while" (I have reviewed electrical plans for nukes, but not with that in mind).
The pressurized accumulators I have seen are outside the reactor vessel (20 & 30 year old memory) and they crack in the earthquake, spilling most of the borated water on the floor, and are the source of leaks from the reactor vessel.
The slow leaks keep water over most of the core for several hours. Plus latent heat from fission product decay with nowhere to go.
I have walked through containment doors at several plants and have thought whether they would withstand earthquakes. It is not too common to have work crews or inspectors inside the containment while operating (most nukes I have been in were under construction or refueling), but one guy forgets to close the door while running for his life, or another tries to enter, being a hero, and steam kills him, leaving the door open. Or earthquake racks door frame, etc.
Les than perfect engineering (remember debate started with "nukes have too much safety") enables some circuits to stay live. There has been a move to get away from oil filled transformers and switchgear, but any oil in a containment "not good".
The diesel tanks have leaks after earthquake, so limited emergency power. Operators have lost most/almost all control over anything. Major earthquake has disrupted operations and Michael Brown's nephew is in charge.
All of your measures are simply not implemented (panic, control wiring N/A, confusion, poor training & poor ad hoc problem solving), the emergency generators run out of fuel before the "steam boiler" explosion.
And this is 18 days before refueling, the 6-12 months and up half life radioisotopes have accumulated.
Alan
There are easy ways around this: drop the rods before the quake hits the reactor. Japan is already doing this with the Shinkansen, using reports from remote seismometers to stop trains before a quake has a chance to derail them. At a speed of 3 km/sec, seismometers 15 km from the reactor could give 5 seconds of warning of the S waves' arrival. That's 3 seconds time to confirm the data from the faster-moving P waves and 2 seconds for the rods to fall. For more lead time, put the seismometers farther away.
The afterheat problem is nowhere near as bad as you paint it either. The references I've got state ~1% of full power after a cool down period of not more than 3 hours (linky, Figure 3). For a 1.6 GWe reactor, that's perhaps 45-50 MW of heat to deal with. In an extreme event with complete meltdown with failure of the reactor vessel, 50 MW is going to be dissipated by rapid boiling of all the water on the floor. Chernobyl's melt didn't escape the building; TMI's meltdown didn't even damage the reactor vessel.
Last, your scenario assumes that everything can go wrong and will do it all at once. Single points of failure are one thing, but Murphy is never that lucky.
Bill, am I incorrect in thinking that both TMI and Chernobyl were unexpected? Here's my understanding of what happened:
TMI was caused in part by warning systems that overloaded the operators with false warnings, causing them to not pay attention to a real warning as quickly as they should have. This was an unexpected operator error caused in large part by bad design. This bad design wasn't understood, and therefore the operator error was unexpected and unpredictable.
Worse, the bad design could be described as an over-reaction to safety concerns, and therefore inherently unpreventable, and something that can be expected to recur as further safety attempts are made.
Chernobyl was, in part, caused by over-confidence on the part of operators who had just received a safety award. A perception of improved safety caused a decrease in actual safety. Again, this would appear to be a feedback between safety attempts and actual safety that is difficult to prevent or predict.
There is an advantage to systems that are smaller, and whose failure is less catastrophic*.
*catastrophic - defined as something that is uninsurable due to the potential size of losses.
Bill, am I incorrect in thinking that both TMI and Chernobyl were unexpected?
The Chernobyl reactor, RBMK 1000, was well known to be a dangerous design long before the accident. The TMI accident was calculated to be low probability, and since we have not had another, it is proven to be low probability.
Worse, the bad design could be described as an over-reaction to safety concerns, and therefore inherently unpreventable, and something that can be expected to recur as further safety attempts are made.
Accidents often happen as a chain of events or factors that combine to result in an accident. The two primary factors at TMI were limited instrumentation and inadequate training. The TMI reactor was designed to be solidly filled with water at all times. That was achieved by maintaining the pressure above the saturation pressure (boiling point) of the water. The operators failed to do this and there was no system to warn them.
Instrumentation and training have been improved and next generation plants will have direct measurement of water level.
There is an advantage to systems that are smaller, and whose failure is less catastrophic*
Obviously true, and there is an advantage to systems that are larger, and whose failure is less catastrophic. You have to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages.
Nuclear power provides clean economical dependable affordable power. It saves thousands of lives per year that would be lost to the emissions of the additional coal gas and oil that we would be burning if fission did not exist. It saves billions of dollars each year in fuel bills by reducing the amount and the cost of gas oil and coal compared to what we would be using without fission. These are big advantages.
If we could build a perfect plant and train perfect operators, nuclear power would almost be too cheap to meter. Dig a hole in the ground, drop in a reactor vessel. Build a turbine and cooling tower on the surface and crank it up.
We recognize that perfection is not going to happen, so we design them to crash without hurting anybody. When an airline pilot makes a serious mistake people die, when a reactor operator makes a serious mistake stockholders get a headache.
If airliners could be designed to fly straight into the ground at 500mph without killing anybody that would be a huge improvement, right? But what would we pay for that improvement? The fatality rate for cars is about 30 times that of the airliner. If the increased ticket price shaves off 10% of the passengers who decide to drive, more people die, and our quality of life is diminished.
If we take emotion and ignorance out of the equation fission is our best option at this time. I think we should be spending $100 billion per year pushing every technology as hard a possible, and if something better is found that would be great.
Spike power is important here. Its what caused a good fraction of the core to simply be vaporized.
You're painting a fiction Alan, and a contrived one at that. All the volitile fission products were released at Chernobyl, and a good fraction of the core was vaporized, which is simply impossible in a western reactor. It cant get hot enough from simple decay heat and with a busted pressure vessel no moderator.
If you try real hard you can paint higher thyroid cancer incidence rates by playing with weather and a plant thats real close to a metropolitan area.
Uh, you're getting your physics confused here. Stop painting scare stories that have nothing to do with reality. It doesn't happen this way, and you might want to think about why before you engage in such fiction.
Alan,
The guys who think things can't POSSIBLY go wrong should read The Black Swan,especially the story about the insurance and the tiger.
I'll bite. I think that shutdowns will be matched by increased availability, so there will be no net production loss from the current fleet. The world-wide additions from new plants is scheduled as follows:
2009: 4 GW
2010: 5 GW
2011: 6 GW
2012: 12 GW
2013: 13 GW
Let's assume some delays and smooth this out, the we'll get a second derivative of about 0.5% per year. So 1% in 2010, 2% in 2012, 3% in 2014 and 4% in 2016. In my mind, this is quite conservative.
just to clarify
1) you assume that the new 4 GWe planned for this year 2009 will not be achieved
but only 2 GWe new installed. What about electric energy produced relative to 2008 (e.g. the 2601 TWhe)
2) for 2010 you say that 1% more electric energy compared to 2008? or to 2009
and so on
thus 2009 = 2625 TWhe
2010 = 2650 TWhe
2011 = ?
2012 = 2700 TWhe
2014 = 2775 "
2016 = 2875 TWh
right ?
If yes, it seems that you agree with my upper limit estimate from chapter I.
regards Michael
Well, no. My thinking was more like additions of 2 GW in 2009, 4 in 2010, 6 in 2011, 8 in 2012, 10 in 2013 and so on. That 2,4,6,8,10... is more conservative than WNA's compilation of planned starts which amounts to 4,5,6,12,13... My smoothed out additions would give rise to this:
This might turn out to be quite conservative - I consider real results more likely to be higher than lower.
thanks!
I would like to see similar honesty from others
who criticize what I wrote (without reading what I wrote)
and within the next few years we can compare my numbers, yours and others.
In fact it would be nice if you could add your view on how the required amount of natural uranium
will come along. 445 GWe by 2016
in comparison with my Table 3
and the Mcquarie numbers in Table 2
michael