On 05/09/2013 22:28, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 05/09/13 11:28, GB wrote:
On 04/09/2013 21:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

You mean from this particular spill? Do you have figures for how many
of their experienced staff have had to stop work because of radiation
limits? Or are you saying it's just 2 since the original problems
started? If so, I must express my surprise.

As far as I know only two workers have been laid off because they had
reached teh 100mSV limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_50

"Over 30 workers are radiated beyond 100 mSv by 23 April 2011."

Since the actual accident they wear suits when in higher level
radiation
zones. Why would they not? They have also used robots.

I think they are only wearing paper overalls and particulate masks.
The idea is to protect against ingesting/breathing in radioactive
particle.

Pretty much anything protects against beta radiation when it is
outside the body. The beta radiation risk is from radioactive
particles inside. That's why pluton
Plutonium is not serious at all. I am not sure anyone ever died of
plutonium.
Polonium..is a different matter.

Beta and gamma are the nuisance ones. You are well protected from alpha
radiation by a piece of paper. Alpha does the most damage if it gets
inside the body which is why a dust mask and protective coveralls are
the absolute bare minimum in a hot unconfined open source environment.

AIUI, plutonium is a *chemical* poison if ingested via one of its salts,
but then so are many heavy metals.

Although that is true in principle AFAIK no-one in the UPPu club has
died of anything other than natural causes or being run over by a bus.
This may have changed in the recent past my data on this is a bit old.

This is as compared to radium which killed both its discoverer and the
hapless and still radioactive Eben Byers victim of quack medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_jaw

Not to mention all the radium girls who used luminous paint. My fathers
wartime watch is still hot enough to trigger a site radiation alarm.

Plutonium salts are very colourful and it exists in a wide range of
highly coloured oxidation states. I have seen them first hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl...n_solution.jpg

They are prettier than this photo manages to capture.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 06/09/2013 02:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Thu, 05 Sep 2013 13:30:08 +0100, Nightjar
wrote:

On 05/09/2013 11:33, Java Jive wrote:
This is the perpetual claim of the pro-nuclear lobby here, but yet
again, just as with TNP, It's just so much hot air - you give no
FIGURES in support of your argument...

Given so often in the past, it shouldn't be necessary to repeat them.

That's the first time I can recall seeing any of these links.

Specific analysis follows, but some general points come out of all of
them, either stated openly, or by implication ...

- The relative costs are HIGHLY dependent on the discount rate
chosen for Discounted Cash Flow (DCF). The documents all work between
5% and 10%, while the standard Treasury rate is 3.5%, however in the
liberated energy market what really matters is what rate a commercial
company would use, or rather what the people lending the money to the
commercial company for the project would use.

- Nuclear power is also HIGHLY sensitive to the capital cost of
building the plant, and all these reports pre-date the latest
announcements by EDF concerning the projected increase in cost of
Hinkley C, to wit: "The Times reported the cost of building each EPR
reactor had increased to £7 billion, which Citigroup analysts did not
regard as commercially viable, projecting a generation cost of
16.6p/kWh for private-sector financed reactors." Incidentally, note
something that even I had previously missed - that's each reactor,
and there are two, so that's £14bn total.

If we don't wish to accept the Citigroup analysis, or wish at least
get some sort of independent figure, how can we adjust these reports
to account for this massive increase in capital expenditure? Well we
can take the increase from 4.5 to 7, a ratio of 1.56, and multiply up
the nuclear capital inputs by this ratio and put them back into the
figures given. Yes, it's crude, but it should at least give us an
idea what the very minimum cost of nuclear can possibly be. I shall
only bother to do this for the two most recent documents you linked,
as the others are too far out of date to be at all useful.

So specific analyses of the two most recent documents linked by you
follow, with the above calculation included ...

http://www.oecd-nea.org/pub/egc/docs...ummary-ENG.pdf
(this PDF is locked, so can not easily quote from it)

+ At least it's tolerably up to date, 2010.

+ p 10 (printed), 11 (viewed)
It apparently includes some cost of nuclear waste management:
"Again, these figures include costs for refurbishment, waste
treatment, and decommissioning after a 60-year lifetime."

The data we require for the above calculation is here ...

- p 5 (printed), 6 (viewed)

From the graph for 10% discount rate, the median figure for European
nuclear seems to be 105 $/MWh, of which the text says 75% reflects
capital costs. So that's:
105 - 0.75*105 + 1.56*0.75*105 = 149.1 $/MWh = £95.57/MWh

Or 9.6p/unit

http://www.pbworld.com/pdfs/regional...model-2011.pdf

+ Again, reasonably up to date, 2011.

- p 4 (printed), 8 (viewed)

"The model also contains input assumptions for the cost of CO2
disposal, waste disposal, decommissioning, fuel price projections,
exchange rates and CO2 price projections; however these parameters
were outside the scope of the work undertaken by PB and have values as
set by DECC."

The implication of this would appear to be that the costs of handling
nuclear waste are included but out of date, as is the cost of all
types of fuel, nuclear and non-nuclear.

The data we require for the above calculation is here ...

- p 16 (printed), 20 (viewed)

Unit cost for nuclear is 7.41p, capital cost is 5.55 of that, so we
have:
7.41 - 5.55 + 1.56 * 5.55 = 10.52p/unit.

So, to the nearest penny or so, the absolute MINIMUM that new build
nuclear powered electricity is likely to cost is 10p/unit.

Incidentally, compare that with a recent posting by TNP:

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 11:47:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

nuclear need never be more than at most 10p.

I don't think anyone needs say any more about this constant source of
disinformation.

So, is this 10p/unit a reasonable guesstimate? It seems so ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-21774652

"Today, electricity sells on the wholesale market for about £45 per
megawatt-hour (MwH). But anything under £90 a MwH would see Hinkley
lose money." So, according to the BBC, Hinkley needs at least
9p/unit, which is in reasonable agreement to the calculations above.

Why the extra 6.6p/unit from Citigroup? Well, ultimately we'd have to
ask them, but things that spring to mind a

- As it's not supposed to come in any way from HMG, EDF have to find
£14bn high risk long term capital on the open market, and that's not
cheap. I suspect they are going to want to pay highish dividends to
investors asap - rather like when you have a mortgage, the early
payments mostly repay interest, capital repayments only begin to
increase significantly when you've paid off most of the interest. This
would mean that, to make the investment worthwhile, they might have to
offer a higher return than allowed for in these documents.

- They may have included more stringent or realistic waste handling
costs.

- They may have included more stringent or realistic fuel costs, given
the shortfall projected by WNA.

But, as I say, ultimately we'd have to ask them.

EDF have already accepted a cap on prices at a level that suggests they
think the Citigroup analysis is wrong.

At any rate, the above calculations effectively demolish any "nuclear
is cheapest" claim. At 10p/unit it will be at least as expensive as
onshore wind, and if the 16.6p/unit is in fact correct, then every
other technology is cheaper. Even the projected cost of carbon
capture at 3.5p / unit when added onto the projected cost of new
carbon build is still likely to be cheaper than nuclear.

Now try applying a similarly critical approach to the claims for the
costs of wind generation, taking into account that experience shows that
it is likely to be lucky to achieve half the duty cycle the
manufacturers claim and that it increases the cost of conventional fuel
power stations, as they cannot work efficiently when used as standby
power for wind. You will find that nuclear is still cheaper even using
your worst claimed costs for it. It also has the advantage of needing a
lot less material per TWh, which means less pollution, the only reason
for anybody to back wind power, provides reliable power 24/7, needs a
lot less land area and does not need to be put in some of our most
picturesque places.

And the WNA are projecting a world-wide shortage of nuclear fuel, and
we have no worthwhile indigenous supplies of it....

A shortage is projected for 2014, as existing mines already supply about
86% of global needs and quite a lot of new reactors are being built,
which need start-up loads. However, the problem is not the amount of
uranium, but the rate at which it is being mined and new mines are under
construction. If India goes for thorium reactors, as seems likely, that
will also reduce expected demand.

Colin Bignell

On Fri, 06 Sep 2013 09:42:53 +0100, Nightjar
wrote:

EDF have already accepted a cap on prices at a level that suggests they
think the Citigroup analysis is wrong.

Interesting, do you have a link? I had thought that any such
agreement was yet to be made?

At any rate, the above calculations effectively demolish any "nuclear
is cheapest" claim. At 10p/unit it will be at least as expensive as
onshore wind, and if the 16.6p/unit is in fact correct, then every
other technology is cheaper. Even the projected cost of carbon
capture at 3.5p / unit when added onto the projected cost of new
carbon build is still likely to be cheaper than nuclear.

Now try applying a similarly critical approach to the claims for the
costs of wind generation ...

What relevance has wind to the choice of technology for baseload? I
am demonstrating that for baseload, nuclear fission as currently
envisaged by UK government would be a senseless choice for the UK to
make because ...
- Fuel is projected to be in short supply
- We have no worthwhile indigenous source of fuel
- We do not have enough fuel stockpiles to last
- New nuclear build is likely to be very expensive
.... so instead we must use carbon-based technologies because ...
+ We have indigenous supplies of gas left
+ We have indigenous supplies of coal left
+ We have indigenous supplies of oil left
+ There is the possibility of large amounts of shale gas
+ Even with CO2 capture or CO2 taxes it's likely to be cheaper

Every world-wide prediction I've ever seen, some of which I've linked
previously, suggests that carbon-based technologies will have by far
the biggest share of generating into the forseeable future. There is
nothing very surprising or controversial here, it's just common sense
based on simple logic.

And the WNA are projecting a world-wide shortage of nuclear fuel, and
we have no worthwhile indigenous supplies of it....

A shortage is projected for 2014, as existing mines already supply about
86% of global needs and quite a lot of new reactors are being built,
which need start-up loads. However, the problem is not the amount of
uranium, but the rate at which it is being mined and new mines are under
construction. If India goes for thorium reactors, as seems likely, that
will also reduce expected demand.

It may well be true that "new mines are under construction", but the
WNA's own figures (again linked in a recent thread), still predict a
natural uranium shortage for 2025-ish onwards:

Bottom graph (as before), acc text "The following graph (WNA 2011
Market Report reference scenario) suggests how these various sources
of supply might look in the decades ahead", and the red demand line
dips below the stacked total of the supplies a little before 2026.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nu...anium-Markets/
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On 05/09/2013 11:28, GB wrote:
The suits won't protect against gamma radiation and they provide no
effective defence against alpha radiation. (This is all me dredging this
info up from my school/university days, 40 years ago, so please excuse
any hopefully minor inaccuracies.)

Not quite 40 years since I learned it, but I think you've mixed up beta
(electrons, moderate penetration) with alpha (helium nuclei, stopped by
paper)

Andy

On 06/09/2013 22:24, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 05/09/2013 11:28, GB wrote:
The suits won't protect against gamma radiation and they provide no
effective defence against alpha radiation. (This is all me dredging this
info up from my school/university days, 40 years ago, so please excuse
any hopefully minor inaccuracies.)

Not quite 40 years since I learned it, but I think you've mixed up beta
(electrons, moderate penetration) with alpha (helium nuclei, stopped by
paper)

Yes, so it appears.

On 06/09/2013 13:57, Java Jive wrote:
...
What relevance has wind to the choice of technology for baseload? I
am demonstrating that for baseload, nuclear fission as currently
envisaged by UK government would be a senseless choice for the UK to
make because ...
- Fuel is projected to be in short supply
- We have no worthwhile indigenous source of fuel
- We do not have enough fuel stockpiles to last
- New nuclear build is likely to be very expensive
... so instead we must use carbon-based technologies because ...
+ We have indigenous supplies of gas left
+ We have indigenous supplies of coal left
+ We have indigenous supplies of oil left
+ There is the possibility of large amounts of shale gas
+ Even with CO2 capture or CO2 taxes it's likely to be cheaper...

My apologies. I took you for another champion of renewables. While I can
see your arguments, although I don't necessarily accept them completely,
there is one thing that, for me, makes nuclear preferable to anything
else - it kills fewer people.

Taking all deaths, including those in mining / recovering the fuel to
deaths from pollution, the figures for deaths per TWh are oil 36, coal
15 in the USA or 60 world wide, gas 4, hydro in Europe 0.10 and nuclear,
excluding Chernobyl, 0.004.

If the projected 4,000 early deaths from Chernobyl, using the LNT
method, are included, nuclear rises to 0.04. Of course, LNT is probably
wrong and using an exposure of 100mSv as the limit at which there may be
some effects, the number of possible early deaths is 2,200.

Colin Bignell

On 08/09/13 11:18, Nightjar wrote:
On 06/09/2013 13:57, Java Jive wrote:
..
What relevance has wind to the choice of technology for baseload? I
am demonstrating that for baseload, nuclear fission as currently
envisaged by UK government would be a senseless choice for the UK to
make because ...
- Fuel is projected to be in short supply
it isn't

- We have no worthwhile indigenous source of fuel

we have no worthwhile source of indigenous coal or oil either.

- We do not have enough fuel stockpiles to last
we certainly dont have any stockpiles of coal or gas either.

- New nuclear build is likely to be very expensive

not as expensive as renewables, and the fuel its dirt cheap.

... so instead we must use carbon-based technologies because ...
+ We have indigenous supplies of gas left
some. abourt 30 yeasr
+ We have indigenous supplies of coal left
none economic.

+ We have indigenous supplies of oil left

we do not.

+ There is the possibility of large amounts of shale gas
for 20-30 yeasr
+ Even with CO2 capture or CO2 taxes it's likely to be cheaper...

it isnt.

My apologies. I took you for another champion of renewables. While I
can see your arguments, although I don't necessarily accept them
completely, there is one thing that, for me, makes nuclear preferable
to anything else - it kills fewer people.

It SHOULD be also as cheap as coal. Its the massive intervention by
politically motivated regulation that drives the cost up.


Taking all deaths, including those in mining / recovering the fuel to
deaths from pollution, the figures for deaths per TWh are oil 36, coal
15 in the USA or 60 world wide, gas 4, hydro in Europe 0.10 and
nuclear, excluding Chernobyl, 0.004.

exactly. nuclear is the future, if we actually have a future.

If the projected 4,000 early deaths from Chernobyl, using the LNT
method, are included, nuclear rises to 0.04. Of course, LNT is
probably wrong and using an exposure of 100mSv as the limit at which
there may be some effects, the number of possible early deaths is 2,200.

I would predict there will be less than 200 'early deaths', if any.

Colin Bignell


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Mere contradiction without supporting facts is not a meaningful or
useful style of argument, nor does it alter facts, however unpalatable
these facts may be to you, nor does it give a good impression of the
case you are trying unsuccessfully to make.

On Sun, 08 Sep 2013 12:54:24 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 08/09/13 11:18, Nightjar wrote:
On 06/09/2013 13:57, Java Jive wrote:
..
What relevance has wind to the choice of technology for baseload? I
am demonstrating that for baseload, nuclear fission as currently
envisaged by UK government would be a senseless choice for the UK to
make because ...
- Fuel is projected to be in short supply

it isn't

Here again are the links you can't seem to understand. I doubt if
anyone else shares your difficulties with this:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf22.html
The World Nuclear Association's own figures suggest that uranium ore
may run out as early as about 2025. This is accepted in a report
authored by former Chief Scientist Sir David King:
http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/wp-c...march-2012.pdf
(p8 pdf) "Using a uranium reserves figure of 6.3MteU (which the report
determines as the amount of “reasonably assured and inferred uranium
resources”), it shows that used in LWRs, these uranium reserves would
be consumed by the end of 2023."

- We have no worthwhile indigenous source of fuel

we have no worthwhile source of indigenous coal or oil either.

Wrong ...

UK Coal:

http://www.solidfuel.co.uk/main_pages/education.htm

"UK Coal Reserves
Economically recoverable coal reserves for existing deep mines and
opencast sites in Britain are estimated to be around 400 million
tonnes. However, the total potential British coal reserves are much
larger. The Coal Authority, the body responsible for directing the
British coal industry, has indicated that in 2005 coal resources at
existing deep mines and existing, planned and known potential
surface-mining sites were in the order of 900 million tonnes, with
approximately one-third in deep mines and two-thirds at surface-mining
sites. Additional recoverable tonnages considered to be potentially
available from new or expanded deep-mining operations amounted to
almost 1.4 billion tonnes!!"

UK Gas From Coal:

http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/...ves-53420.html

"“The United Kingdom is well placed within Europe in having large
reserves of indigenous coal both onshore and offshore in the southern
North Sea,” points out the UK’s Coal Authority, now part of the
Department of Energy and Climate Change.

“These reserves have the potential to provide security of future
energy supplies long after oil and natural gas are exhausted.”

The key to commercialising the nation’s vast beds of fossil fuel is a
process called underground coal gasification (UCG) – a discrete,
environmentally friendly method of liberating the energy content of
the coal. What’s created is a synthesis gas, or Syngas.

The process uses directional drilling techniques that are commonplace
in the oil and gas sector to follow the coal seam. But crucially it
doesn’t involve deploying the fracking technology that has been
vilified despite transforming the US gas industry.

The UK resource suitable for deep seam UCG is estimated at 17 billion
tonnes, or 300 years' supply at current consumption, according to a
Department of Trade & Industry report."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22432130

""It's an unusual fact that despite the industrial revolution and
everything that's happened since, 75% of British coal is still
underground," he said.

"Under the North Sea there are vast deposits. We're talking about two
billion tonnes of coal off the coast here. Now, to give you some
measure of that, two billion tonnes has more energy in it than we've
ever extracted from the totality of North Sea gas since we began.""

UK Oil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil

"UK sources give a range of estimates of reserves, but even using the
most optimistic "maximum" estimate of ultimate recovery, 76% had been
recovered at end 2010."

So we could probably assume that at least about 15% of the total yield
to date still remains.

"... the highest annual production was seen in 1999, with offshore oil
production in that year of 407×106 m³ (398 million barrels) and had
declined to 231×106 m³ (220 million barrels) in 2007.[20] This was the
largest decrease of any other oil exporting nation in the world, and
has led to Britain becoming a net importer of crude for the first time
in decades, as recognized by the energy policy of the United Kingdom.
The production is expected to fall to one-third of its peak by 2020."

So UK oil production is falling, and we are importing, but we do still
have worthwhile reserves.

- We do not have enough fuel stockpiles to last
we certainly dont have any stockpiles of coal or gas either.

We don't NEED strategic stockpiles for carbon-based fuels because we
can obtain these fuels indigenously. We only need strategic
stockpiles for fuels such as natural uranium that we cannot produce
indigenously, and we do not have sufficient stockpiles of this to last
out a new nuclear build on the scale envisaged by HMG.

- New nuclear build is likely to be very expensive

not as expensive as renewables, and the fuel its dirt cheap.

I'm comparing nuclear with carbon-based generation for baseload. Most
renewables aren't relevant to this debate.

The price of the fuel alone is neither here nor there, what matters is
the total cost of nuclear generation, and, as shown up thread, it's
going to be VERY expensive.

... so instead we must use carbon-based technologies because ...
+ We have indigenous supplies of gas left

some. abourt 30 yeasr

Yet another figure plucked out of the air - according to UK
Government it's actually about half that ...
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...UR_2013_v1.pdf
.... but that doesn't include shale gas or gas from coal.

But by constrast we have NO worthwhile indigenous supplies of nuclear
fissile material AT ALL.

+ We have indigenous supplies of coal left

none economic.

But, as above, we do have supplies aplenty. Further, their being
uneconomic now actually helps us preserve them against the day when we
might need them, because instead of exhausting our own reserves, we
are exhausting other people's. To have our own reserves 'in the
bank', as it were, means that we can confidently RELY on coal-based
generation in a way that we cannot for nuclear, for which we can not
RELY on being able to obtain the fuel.

+ We have indigenous supplies of oil left

we do not.

See above, we do.

+ There is the possibility of large amounts of shale gas
for 20-30 yeasr

Yet another figure plucked out of the air. Where is your source for
this information?

And anyway that is still 20-30 years longer than any indigenous
supplies of natural uranium.

+ Even with CO2 capture or CO2 taxes it's likely to be cheaper...

it isnt.

I refer you to the two most recent documents linked by Colin, which
showed that it is.

My apologies. I took you for another champion of renewables. While I
can see your arguments, although I don't necessarily accept them
completely, there is one thing that, for me, makes nuclear preferable
to anything else - it kills fewer people.

It SHOULD be also as cheap as coal. Its the massive intervention by
politically motivated regulation that drives the cost up.

How, then, do you account for the massive increase in the projected
capital cost for Hinkley C, a year-on increase of 1.56 times, when the
legislative framework has remained unchanged over this same period?

Clearly the current legislative framework does not make nuclear
expensive, but it might be that the massive subsidies received by the
industry in the past have formerly made it appear cheaper than it
should really be. When all relevant costs such as waste management
are included, and all hidden subsidies removed, nuclear is a very
expensive technology.

Taking all deaths, including those in mining / recovering the fuel to
deaths from pollution, the figures for deaths per TWh are oil 36, coal
15 in the USA or 60 world wide, gas 4, hydro in Europe 0.10 and
nuclear, excluding Chernobyl, 0.004.

exactly. nuclear is the future, if we actually have a future.

Nuclear fission is irrelevant to a country without a strategic supply
of fissile material.

If the projected 4,000 early deaths from Chernobyl, using the LNT
method, are included, nuclear rises to 0.04. Of course, LNT is
probably wrong and using an exposure of 100mSv as the limit at which
there may be some effects, the number of possible early deaths is 2,200.

I would predict there will be less than 200 'early deaths', if any.

Again, irrelevant.
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On 08/09/2013 17:13, Java Jive wrote:
....
How, then, do you account for the massive increase in the projected
capital cost for Hinkley C, a year-on increase of 1.56 times, when the
legislative framework has remained unchanged over this same period?...

I suspect that it has been influenced by the increased cost of the
Finnish reactor, which has suffered major delays, partly due to looking
at what lessons can be learned from the problems in Japan. By using the
highest known cost, the developers can be sure that they won't get
caught out if their reactor costs go that high. It will also be useful
in their negotiations over pricing to use a high capital cost, as well
as them looking good if they manage to come in under budget.

Colin Bignell

On Mon, 09 Sep 2013 08:00:32 +0100, Nightjar
wrote:

On 08/09/2013 17:13, Java Jive wrote:
...
How, then, do you account for the massive increase in the projected
capital cost for Hinkley C, a year-on increase of 1.56 times, when the
legislative framework has remained unchanged over this same period?...

I suspect that it has been influenced by the increased cost of the
Finnish reactor, which has suffered major delays, partly due to looking
at what lessons can be learned from the problems in Japan.

You're forgetting part of what I quoted up thread - for EDF,
Flamanville is a little closer to home, ...

On Thu, 05 Sep 2013 11:33:03 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

"EDF's Flamanville reactor, which is under construction in France, is
running four years late and at least double its original budget."

But you're right to mention the Finnish reactor as well. It too seems
to be another example of spiralling costs and missed deadlines.

By using the
highest known cost, the developers can be sure that they won't get
caught out if their reactor costs go that high. It will also be useful
in their negotiations over pricing to use a high capital cost, as well
as them looking good if they manage to come in under budget.

Well, yes, I too have wondered almost continuously, as the sorry saga
has unfolded, how and how much they are trying to manoeuvre HMG into
early acceptance.
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On 09/09/2013 13:37, Java Jive wrote:
...
"EDF's Flamanville reactor, which is under construction in France, is
running four years late and at least double its original budget."

Two years (and a fair bit of the extra cost) of which is due to the
French authorities carrying out additional testing following Fukushima.

But you're right to mention the Finnish reactor as well. It too seems
to be another example of spiralling costs and missed deadlines...

To be expected with the first of a kind of almost anything. The next
versions usually benefit from the experiences of what not to do.

Colin Bignell

On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:49:22 +0100, Nightjar
wrote:

On 09/09/2013 13:37, Java Jive wrote:
..
"EDF's Flamanville reactor, which is under construction in France, is
running four years late and at least double its original budget."

Two years (and a fair bit of the extra cost) of which is due to the
French authorities carrying out additional testing following Fukushima.

But you're right to mention the Finnish reactor as well. It too seems
to be another example of spiralling costs and missed deadlines...

To be expected with the first of a kind of almost anything. The next
versions usually benefit from the experiences of what not to do.

In the UK, Heysham 1 took 19 years from breaking soil to commercial operation,
Heysham 2 took 9 years, Torness just 8 years. Then they gave up and ****ed away
three generations worth of gas keeping the lights on.

--

On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:27:39 +0100, The Other Mike
wrote:

In the UK, Heysham 1 took 19 years from breaking soil to commercial operation,
Heysham 2 took 9 years, Torness just 8 years.

But Hinkley C has been mooted for how long now? And the cost keeps
going up without them even breaking ground. No wonder people are
nervous about the cost.

Then they gave up and ****ed away
three generations worth of gas keeping the lights on.

If 'they' (we) and other nations hadn't there'd be even less reserves
of fissile fuel than there are.
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On 11/09/2013 03:44, Java Jive wrote:
On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:27:39 +0100, The Other Mike
wrote:

In the UK, Heysham 1 took 19 years from breaking soil to commercial operation,
Heysham 2 took 9 years, Torness just 8 years.

But Hinkley C has been mooted for how long now? And the cost keeps
going up without them even breaking ground. No wonder people are
nervous about the cost.

Then they gave up and ****ed away
three generations worth of gas keeping the lights on.

If 'they' (we) and other nations hadn't there'd be even less reserves
of fissile fuel than there are.

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

Current global usage is 68kt/year. At a maximum price of $130/kg, known
economic world reserves in 2009 were 5.3Mt, or enough for about 80
years. That is quite a large reserve for a mineral. By comparison, zinc,
a mineral that is about as common as uranium, has remained at about 20
years' worth of assured supplies since the mid 1990s. Reserves of copper
have remained at around 30 years since the 1970s.

At $260/kg, an additional 7.6Mt of conventional reserves of uranium
become viable, giving a total known reserve of 190 years at current
rates. Unconventional reserves* are a possible 22Mt, but currently not
economic to recover, while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

* Until the mid 1990s, when it became uneconomic, 20% of US uranium
supplies were a by-product of phosphate extraction.

As 31% of known conventional uranium reserves are in Australia, there is
not even much of a risk of availability being disrupted by political
instability.

Colin Bignell

On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publica...ub1104_scr.pdf

"Nuclear power is expected to be an important part of the worldwide
energy mix at least for the next 50 years, and by most projections
well beyond. That is, of course, provided an adequate supply of
uranium is available to sustain the nominal growth rate for nuclear
power of 1 to 3% per year that is projected by some analysts."

.... and it divides the future into three scenarios from 2000 to 2050,
the lowest of which features over that time a total of 3,390,000t
world demand, the intermediate 5,394,100t, the highest 7,577,000t.
There are insufficient likely reserves to meet the two highest
figures.

I have also been linking to the following page - where a similar
projection, although only up to 2030, is shown graphically - for
over a year now, and despite being updated in the meantime, its
forecasts haven't become any more optimistic, and broadly agree with
the conclusions of the document above:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf22.html

So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

Arguments about total reserves do not really help in this case. Any
reserves that are actually there and will be mined tomorrow if we pay
someone enough today will be small comfort if the lights have already
gone out today.

Further ...
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nu...ly-of-Uranium/

As you seem well aware, and as explained in the link above, there is a
difference between the resources that are available, and those that
are economically extractable. As we live in a market rather than a
planned economy, the market will be the ultimate arbiter of how much
exploration will be done, and how much ore will be extracted, and the
market is not an entirely predictable or controllable thing. It could
well be that there is are significant time lags between price
increases and new resources becoming available, during which time,
prices are likely to be extremely volatile, and supplies insecure (as
oil prices have been during various crises over my lifetime).

Further, the graph in the middle of that page suggests that actually
the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and those new resources
being found are tending to be more expensive to extract.

The current spot price of U3O8 is $34/lb or $75/kg, whereas over
recent years, despite a massive increase in expenditure on
exploration, the amount of $80 (U, or is it really U3O8, in the
absence of explicit units we can't be absolutely certain which)
resources found annually has become less than half of yet more
expensive resources. This is not exactly an encouragement to further
exploration! Yes, the spot price will certainly go up, that's what
I've been saying all along, but that graph doesn't exactly suggest
that new economically exploitable resources will necessarily appear to
meet demand, just because the price has risen, and therefore,
according to the laws of supply and demand, they should. Rather, the
inference is that most existing reserves are actually already known to
mankind.

And, BTW ...

Current global usage is 68kt/year.

You have specified neither source nor units. Is this tons of yellow
cake, U3O8 ore, Natural Uranium, Lightly Enriched Uranium, or
something else? I'm not being flippant here, the difference is
significant ...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Fa...-Requirements/

Current demand is actually: 66,512 t U = 78,438 t U3O8

At a maximum price of $130/kg, known
economic world reserves in 2009 were 5.3Mt, or enough for about 80
years.

53Mt of U3O8, which is to what the figure most probably refers, means
that actually abut 70 years is more accurate.

But anyway, as already explained, what matters is supply and demand.
Which are you going to build, a carbon based generator where world
supplies will last the forseeable future and UK supplies at least some
of that, or a nuclear fission based reactor where world supplies have
consistently for some years been predicted to get short around 10
years after you complete your build, and the only UK supplies rely on
expensive reprocessing and at best can only give you 6.5GW over your
60 year planned lifecycle? It would be strategically imbecilic to
choose the latter.

while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

Jeez! Here we go again! How many times must I refute this absurdity?
I first posted here a calculation concerning this as long ago as 2009,
and since have made at least 11 further posts refuting it, some
repeating the original calculation for different scenarios - all UK
energy, all UK electrical energy, etc - yet, like so many urban
myths, if refuses to die. If people were rational rather than
pseudo-religious in their mindset, this subject would NEVER have been
mentioned again after its first debunking, but this is what always
happens in these debates, the pro-nuclear quasi-religion has taken
over peoples' minds to the extent here that its adherents conveniently
'forget' those facts and calculations that don't support their
quasi-religious beliefs.

So, for the 13th time ...

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/w...page_165.shtml

"In the Japanese experiment, three cages full of adsorbent uranium
attracting material weighing 350 kg collected “more than 1 kg of
yellow cake in 240 days;” this figure corresponds to about 1.6 kg per
year. The cages had a cross-sectional area of 48 m2."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake

"Typically, yellowcake(s) ... contain(s) about 80% uranium oxide"

In a previous discussion this year, I established that nuclear fuel
conversion is based on the following rate:

260tU3O8/GWyr = 220tU/GWyr = 22tLEU/GWyr

So for yellow cake at 80% U3O8 we can now enlarge that as follows:

325tYC/GWyr = 260tU3O8/GWyr = 220tU/GWyr = 22tLEU/GWyr

For each GW we would therefore need 325,000 / 1.6 * 48 m2 of cages, or
9,750,000 m2.

We'll have to makes some reasonable assumptions about the cages,
because when describing the experimental setup Mackay doesn't give
their height. As presumably they have to be at least somewhere near
land for security against theft, damage, weather, and tide, there must
be a depth limit; indeed, there is likely to be a depth limit for
buoyancy reasons anyway. What should we assume is the depth/height of
the cages? 10m seems a reasonable starting guess.

So that gives us 975,000m or 975km of coastline per GW.

http://mapzone.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/...s/q_12_69.html

The length of the coastline of mainland Great Britain is 17,820 km.

So if we covered the entire coastline of the mainland with all this
ugly hardware, we could get at very best 18GW.

Further, in this same section, Mackay asks "What is the energy cost of
processing all the seawater?", but AFAICS he never actually answers
that question. We would have to be sure that the energy input into
making the materials for the structures and the structures themselves,
deploying them, 'harvesting' them, and extracting the fuel was not
going to be significant in terms of either CO2 production or the
electrical energy 'yield'.

Will this myth please now **** off and die???!!!

A good summary of uranium availability.

No, there's nothing here that has not been raised and refuted before,
endlessly to the point of ad nauseam.

I await JJ's response admitting
that he has been wrong in stating that uranium is in short supply.

I have never said uranium IS IN SHORT SUPPLY COMPARED TO TODAY'S
DEMAND, I have only said that it WILL BE COMPARED TO FUTURE DEMAND.
So far no-one from the pro-nuclear propagandists has come up with
anything credible to refute this. This is unsurprising, as it's based
entirely on WNA's own figures.
--
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On 11/09/2013 19:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

At which time, there had been no exploration for uranium since 1983.

....
So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

In 1970, you could have seen equally valid reports from the copper
industry that we were going to run out of copper reserves by the year
2000. Not only did we not do so, we still have an estimated 30 years of
supplies at today's much higher use rate. That is a fairly standard
pattern for minerals and uranium can be expected to follow it.

....
while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

Jeez! Here we go again! How many times must I refute this absurdity?
I first posted here a calculation concerning this as long ago as 2009,
and since have made at least 11 further posts refuting it,

Are you refuting the estimate of the cost at which it might become
economic, or the fact that a highly experimental test is not likely to
reflect what a commercial operation might achieve after proper development?

....
I have never said uranium IS IN SHORT SUPPLY COMPARED TO TODAY'S
DEMAND, I have only said that it WILL BE COMPARED TO FUTURE DEMAND....

Exactly what the copper industry said about copper in 1970.

Colin Bignell

On 11/09/13 23:23, Nightjar wrote:
On 11/09/2013 19:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

At which time, there had been no exploration for uranium since 1983.

...
So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

In 1970, you could have seen equally valid reports from the copper
industry that we were going to run out of copper reserves by the year
2000. Not only did we not do so, we still have an estimated 30 years
of supplies at today's much higher use rate. That is a fairly standard
pattern for minerals and uranium can be expected to follow it.

...
while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

Jeez! Here we go again! How many times must I refute this absurdity?
I first posted here a calculation concerning this as long ago as 2009,
and since have made at least 11 further posts refuting it,

Are you refuting the estimate of the cost at which it might become
economic, or the fact that a highly experimental test is not likely to
reflect what a commercial operation might achieve after proper
development?

...
I have never said uranium IS IN SHORT SUPPLY COMPARED TO TODAY'S
DEMAND, I have only said that it WILL BE COMPARED TO FUTURE DEMAND....

Exactly what the copper industry said about copper in 1970.

Colin Bignell
Currently the cost of a fuel rod processed equates to around 1.6p per
unit electricity. The actual uranium in it is about 0.1p - the rest is
the cost of refining and manufacturing the rod.

we dont use MOX fuel because raw uranium is dirt cheap - the MOX fuel is
about 0.2p reprocessed. Uranoium could go up ten times in price and it
would barely dent the final cost of the electricity, which is all in the
cost of the money you borrow to build it, and the cost of maintaining
and finally decomissioning the plant to the incredibly high (and
probably unnecessarily high) standards the regulator requires.

WE dont use breeder reactors because again, the uranium and plutonium
produced is more expensive than mining it.

The world is awash with less easy to mine uranium. Fertile raher than
fissile material is in abundance: with breeders there is potentially
thousands of years of fertile material avialable - U238, thorium and so on.

Far more likely to run out of the raw materials - petroleum based -
needed to make wind turbine blades, than out of suitable reactor fuels.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:12:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/09/13 23:23, Nightjar wrote:
On 11/09/2013 19:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

At which time, there had been no exploration for uranium since 1983.

Yet it still agrees with one produced within the last year!

So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

In 1970, you could have seen equally valid reports from the copper
industry that we were going to run out of copper reserves by the year
2000. Not only did we not do so, we still have an estimated 30 years
of supplies at today's much higher use rate. That is a fairly standard
pattern for minerals and uranium can be expected to follow it.

But ...

- Did you see reports in 1970 and 1983, thus covering the same
time scale as the two I linked, saying exactly the same thing, without
any significant change in forecast occurring in the meantime? My
guess is that you won't have.

- 1970 was in the middle of the cold war, and before the age of
enabling technologies such as satelite technology, etc. For both
political and technological reasons, we know much more about the world
and its resources now than we did then.

- You are ignoring the evidence that I highlighted that suggests
that in fact most of the worthwhile resources of uranium are already
known to mankind.

Given this uncertainty of world uranium supply, coupled with the lack
of any worthwhile indigenous supply, while there are no likely
immediate world shortages of carbon based supplies, of which we also
have some indigenous supplies, no government who takes strategic fuel
supply seriously could possibly opt for nuclear. In such
circumstances, to choose nuclear over carbon would be a dereliction of
duty.

while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

Jeez! Here we go again! How many times must I refute this absurdity?
I first posted here a calculation concerning this as long ago as 2009,
and since have made at least 11 further posts refuting it,

Are you refuting the estimate of the cost at which it might become
economic, or the fact that a highly experimental test is not likely to
reflect what a commercial operation might achieve after proper
development?

I'm refuting the fact that it is a solution to where we are going to
get yellow cake in the forseeable future. The yield is at least an
order of magnitude below what would be required, and that gap seems
unlikely to be sufficiently eroded by technological development, which
when I last looked didn't appear to be taking place anyway, while the
environmental impact to get such a pitiful amount is absurdly out of
proportion. People who vaunt nuclear have a habit of talking about
its energy density - for a given amount of power: how many acres of
open cast uranium ore vs how many acres of open cast coal, how many
acres of spoil heaps, how much ash; or how many acres of wind
turbines, etc. You can't get much less dense energy than the amounts
of uranium in seawater. Using this method, there is effectively not
the slightest chance of our achieving security of uranium supply
within the ten year timescale required. That is why it is a myth, and
that is why here it is always wheeled out as a last resort spoiler,
when other arguments are failing.

WE dont use breeder reactors because again, the uranium and plutonium
produced is more expensive than mining it.

The world is awash with less easy to mine uranium. Fertile raher than
fissile material is in abundance: with breeders there is potentially
thousands of years of fertile material avialable - U238, thorium and so on.

But that's breeding technology, whereas what the UK is planning to
build is only fissile technology. As the WNA documents linked many
times show, fissile technology on its own has no UK future worth
discussing, because it can not give us security of supply. If you
want to build a different technology such as breeder technology, you
first have to accept that the UK's current nuclear policy is doomed,
and try and persuade those in power to change it accordingly. Until
you do, nuclear power has no useful future in the UK.
--
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header does not exist. Or use a contact address at:
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http://www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/Macfarlane.html

On 12/09/2013 01:56, Java Jive wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:12:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/09/13 23:23, Nightjar wrote:
On 11/09/2013 19:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

At which time, there had been no exploration for uranium since 1983.

Yet it still agrees with one produced within the last year!

Which, as reserves rose by 15% in the two years 2005-2006, suggests that
either there has been a massive increase in demand, or that one of them,
at least, is wrong.

From:

http://www.ga.gov.au/energy/uranium-...resources.html

Australia has the world’s largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the world’s third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australia’s uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.

So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

In 1970, you could have seen equally valid reports from the copper
industry that we were going to run out of copper reserves by the year
2000. Not only did we not do so, we still have an estimated 30 years
of supplies at today's much higher use rate. That is a fairly standard
pattern for minerals and uranium can be expected to follow it.

But ...

- Did you see reports in 1970 and 1983, thus covering the same
time scale as the two I linked, saying exactly the same thing, without
any significant change in forecast occurring in the meantime? My
guess is that you won't have.

- 1970 was in the middle of the cold war, and before the age of
enabling technologies such as satelite technology, etc. For both
political and technological reasons, we know much more about the world
and its resources now than we did then.

- You are ignoring the evidence that I highlighted that suggests
that in fact most of the worthwhile resources of uranium are already
known to mankind.

From your own link to the WNA:

From time to time concerns are raised that the known resources might be
insufficient when judged as a multiple of present rate of use. But this
is the Limits to Growth fallacy, a major intellectual blunder recycled
from the 1970s, which takes no account of the very limited nature of the
knowledge we have at any time of what is actually in the Earth's crust.
Our knowledge of geology is such that we can be confident that
identified resources of metal minerals are a small fraction of what is
there.

and:

In recent years there has been persistent misunderstanding and
misrepresentation of the abundance of mineral resources, with the
assertion that the world is in danger of actually running out of many
mineral resources. While congenial to common sense if the scale of the
Earth's crust is ignored, it lacks empirical support in the trend of
practically all mineral commodity prices and published resource figures
over the long term.

and:

Unlike the metals which have been in demand for centuries, society has
barely begun to utilise uranium. As serious non-military demand did not
materialise until significant nuclear generation was built by the late
1970s, there has been only one cycle of
exploration-discovery-production, driven in large part by late 1970s
price peaks (MacDonald, C, Rocks to reactors: Uranium exploration and
the market. Proceedings of WNA Symposium 2001). This initial cycle has
provided more than enough uranium for the last three decades and several
more to come. Clearly, it is premature to speak about long-term uranium
scarcity when the entire nuclear industry is so young that only one
cycle of resource replenishment has been required. It is instead a
reassurance that this first cycle of exploration was capable of meeting
the needs of more than half a century of nuclear energy demand.

Given this uncertainty of world uranium supply, coupled with the lack
of any worthwhile indigenous supply,while there are no likely
immediate world shortages of carbon based supplies, of which we also
have some indigenous supplies, no government who takes strategic fuel
supply seriously could possibly opt for nuclear. In such
circumstances, to choose nuclear over carbon would be a dereliction of
duty.

In 2012, British coal fired power stations consumed 54.9 million tonnes
of coal, of which 44.8Mt (81.6%) was imported coal, mainly, in order,
from Russia, Columbia and the USA. Against that, the major suppliers of
uranium are Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia, with the largest reserves
in the last. Are you suggesting we should trust Russia more than two
major Commonwealth nations? I don't recommend you try for a job in the
Diplomatic Service if you are.

while work on recovery from seawater (4000Mt)
suggest it might become economic at around $250 per kg.

Jeez! Here we go again! How many times must I refute this absurdity?
I first posted here a calculation concerning this as long ago as 2009,
and since have made at least 11 further posts refuting it,

Are you refuting the estimate of the cost at which it might become
economic, or the fact that a highly experimental test is not likely to
reflect what a commercial operation might achieve after proper
development?

I'm refuting the fact that it is a solution to where we are going to
get yellow cake in the forseeable future....

As I didn't suggest it was, I only gave a figure at which it might
become economically viable, you are refuting an argument that only you
put forward.

Colin Bignell

On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:29:51 +0100 Nightjar wrote :
Australia has the world’s largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the world’s third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australia’s uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.

Yet there are no nuclear power stations in Australia AFAIK.

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com

On 12/09/13 10:18, Tony Bryer wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:29:51 +0100 Nightjar wrote :
Australia has the worlds largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the worlds third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australias uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.
Yet there are no nuclear power stations in Australia AFAIK.

(1) shortage of cooling water
(2) coal practically oozing out of the ground
(3) a lot of hydro potential

No reason to go nuclear when you are sitting on the worlds fourth
biggest coal mine.

(USA ranks one, Russian federation ranks two and china ranks three)

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On 12/09/2013 10:18, Tony Bryer wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:29:51 +0100 Nightjar wrote :
Australia has the world’s largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the world’s third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australia’s uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.

Yet there are no nuclear power stations in Australia AFAIK.

With an income of over a billion Australian dollars a year from
exporting the uranium, it probably makes better economic sense to burn
their huge reserves of coal instead. Their main generating sources are
coal 74%, gas 15% and hydro 6%. I suspect it is also easier to build a
small coal or gas fired station for an isolated community than a small
nuclear power station.

What I find slightly surprising, given that there seems to be many
scattered farmsteads and lots of sun, is that solar PV only represents
1% of their generation capacity.

Colin Bignell

On 12/09/13 14:57, Nightjar wrote:
On 12/09/2013 10:18, Tony Bryer wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:29:51 +0100 Nightjar wrote :
Australia has the worlds largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the worlds third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium
mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australias uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.

Yet there are no nuclear power stations in Australia AFAIK.

With an income of over a billion Australian dollars a year from
exporting the uranium, it probably makes better economic sense to burn
their huge reserves of coal instead. Their main generating sources are
coal 74%, gas 15% and hydro 6%. I suspect it is also easier to build a
small coal or gas fired station for an isolated community than a small
nuclear power station.

What I find slightly surprising, given that there seems to be many
scattered farmsteads and lots of sun, is that solar PV only represents
1% of their generation capacity.

...and 0.1% of their generated electricity....
Colin Bignell


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:29:51 +0100, Nightjar
wrote:

On 12/09/2013 01:56, Java Jive wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:12:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/09/13 23:23, Nightjar wrote:
On 11/09/2013 19:34, Java Jive wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:10:02 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Nightjar wrote:

As I have said before, reserves are not a problem, although available
extraction may result in short-term problems in supply.

What matters is whether, when, and for how long, world demand for U308
will exceed supply. As linked many times before, and again below, the
World Nuclear Association's own and others' predictions have
consistently slated this to happen around 2025.

The following document was produced in 2001 ...

At which time, there had been no exploration for uranium since 1983.

Yet it still agrees with one produced within the last year!

Which, as reserves rose by 15% in the two years 2005-2006, suggests that
either there has been a massive increase in demand, or that one of them,
at least, is wrong.

(As often, your figures are not given sources)

To be exact ...

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nu...ly-of-Uranium/

Graph entitled "Known Uranium Resources And Expenditure", between
those years actually the increase in known resources was about 6%.

Meanwhile:

http://world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclea...anium-Markets/

Graph entitled "World Uranium Production And Demand", between those
years production actually fell about 6% (but the units are different,
so I'm NOT trying to claim that one explains the other, just pointing
out by example that you haven't included all the possible factors).

Both graphs show a steady increase since. For the reserves, actually
there's been an increase in reserves all the way up to 2011, however,
most of those are very expensive - the known $80/kg and $130/kg
reserves are now FALLING, and only the known $260/kg reserves are
increasing.

From:

http://www.ga.gov.au/energy/uranium-...resources.html

Australia has the world’s largest Reasonably Assured Resources (RAR) of
uranium and currently is the world’s third largest producer of uranium
after Kazakhstan and Canada. There are three operating uranium mines, at
Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern
Territory, and three additional operations are scheduled to begin
production in the near future. Australia’s uranium production is
forecast to more than double by 2030.

I presume this is incorporated into the WNA figures that I've linked.
The following data certainly suggests that so far it has been:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Fa...ction-figures/

Australia +17% over the last decade.

So we have two documents 12 years apart produced by two different
creditable organisations with first hand knowledge of the industry
both saying that demand will outstrip supply somewhere around 2025.

In 1970, you could have seen equally valid reports from the copper
industry that we were going to run out of copper reserves by the year
2000. Not only did we not do so, we still have an estimated 30 years
of supplies at today's much higher use rate. That is a fairly standard
pattern for minerals and uranium can be expected to follow it.

But ...

- Did you see reports in 1970 and 1983, thus covering the same
time scale as the two I linked, saying exactly the same thing, without
any significant change in forecast occurring in the meantime? My
guess is that you won't have.

- 1970 was in the middle of the cold war, and before the age of
enabling technologies such as satelite technology, etc. For both
political and technological reasons, we know much more about the world
and its resources now than we did then.

- You are ignoring the evidence that I highlighted that suggests
that in fact most of the worthwhile resources of uranium are already
known to mankind.

From your own link to the WNA:

[snip]

Naturally, I've read all of that page a while ago. Again you are
confusing TOTAL resources with their RATE of extraction, what matters
is supply compared with demand.

In 2012, British coal fired power stations consumed 54.9 million tonnes
of coal, of which 44.8Mt (81.6%) was imported coal, mainly, in order,
from Russia, Columbia and the USA. Against that, the major suppliers of
uranium are Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia, with the largest reserves
in the last. Are you suggesting we should trust Russia more than two
major Commonwealth nations? I don't recommend you try for a job in the
Diplomatic Service if you are.

I'm not interested in having an arse-licking job in the Diplomatic
Service, thank you. I'm interested only in which is the most secure
supply of fuel for the lifetime of a new build, 60 years. If even the
World Nuclear Association - not a 'green' organisation, nor a
political party, nor anyone else with an anti-nuclear axe to grind,
rather an organisation that might be expected to be pro-nuclear power
rather than anti - are predicting demand for uranium to outstrip
supply, then we'd be mega-stupid to ignore this.

In contrast, carbon-fuel supplies are sufficiently plentiful that were
we to have problems with one supplier, we could either simply go to
another, or look to restarting production ourselves, particularly if
we major on coal and gas, as the latter can be produced from shale and
coal.

And, although it's not really relevant, as far as anti-Russian feeling
goes, it's just so much more religious hot-air and bigotry. I don't
confuse reservations about Putin with a dislike or distrust of the
country or its people, any more than I would wish anyone to judge the
British by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, or the present nobody. I
studied the language for a year at school before changing to science
subjects, and Russian art and culture, particularly its romantic
classical music, is amongst the finest ever produced.

Whatever its shortcomings in internal politics, in international
politics Russia is a useful independent thinker in the world, to an
extent counterbalancing American gung-ho - take a look at what's
happening in the current Syrian chemical weapons crisis, for example.

And you missed this in your quoting:

"In November 2009 the IAEA Board approved a Russian proposal to create
an international "fuel bank" or guaranteed reserve of low-enriched
uranium under IAEA control at the International Uranium Enrichment
Centre (IUEC) at Angarsk. This Russian LEU reserve was established a
year later and comprises 120 tonnes of low-enriched uranium as UF6,
enriched 2.0 - 4.95% U-235 (with 40t of latter), available to any IAEA
member state in good standing which is unable to procure fuel for
political reasons. It is fully funded by Russia, held under
safeguards, and the fuel will be made available to IAEA at market
rates, using a formula based on spot prices. Following an IAEA
decision to allocate some of it, Rosatom will transport material to St
Petersburg and transfer title to IAEA, which will then transfer
ownership to the recipient."

Hardly the bogey man of Europe that some here would have us believe.

I'm refuting the fact that it is a solution to where we are going to
get yellow cake in the forseeable future....

As I didn't suggest it was, I only gave a figure at which it might
become economically viable, you are refuting an argument that only you
put forward.

********! If you weren't suggesting it as an alternative source of
uranium, there was no point in mentioning it all, so in that case why
did you do so?
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