THORIUM

Imagine a NEW power generators systems that is small, cheap to build, safe to operate, can be used to power homes, business, and transportation, cars, trucks, ships, and even planes and spacecraft!!

Like prairie dogs, the optimists are poking their heads out and peering into the clear skies, googly eyed. Green energy is on the horizon - Green coughnuclear Energy! There can be no one left who thinks that yesterday's elections in Iraq will have ended the political instability in the Middle East. It is now assumed even by the US military leadership that the forces in Iraq cannot be significantly decreased for years. There is going to be more and more political pressure to achieve energy independence rather than face the prospect of endless military occupations of sources of oil.

The closest thing to an independence plan produced by the Bush administration or the energy industry is the hydrogen economy. The idea is to convert our vehicles, ships, and aircraft to burn the pollution free fuel in various forms. It would solve a problem, but it could take 20 years or so.

There is a new technology that can go into production within 1 to 2 years and within 10 years replace all need for fossil fuels!

However, hydrogen isn't a source of fuel - it's a storage medium. It is produced by expending some other primary source of energy.

The source the government, energy industry, and the automotive industry has in mind is nuclear power. We are talking about literally thousands of new nuclear facilities dedicated to the production of hydrogen through fission powered electrolysis (the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen gas).

The hydrogen economy is really a nuclear economy. Investors and the rest of corporate America may not realize how close the country is to making a gigantic bet on a nuclear future. The scientists and engineers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory have been developing the advanced nuclear technologies that would power the hydrogen world.

Among the designs the INEEL has been working on is the Very High Temperature Reactor, the one best suited to provide the process heat necessary to break hydrogen apart from water so it can be turned into fuel. (There are a few issues with storing hydrogen, but we won't deal with them here.) Among the high temperature reactor variants is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor being developed here and in China?

I asked Dr Steve Herring of the INEEL how many of these new, relatively efficient reactors would be needed to displace the estimated US fuel import requirements 20 years from now. Based on the Energy Information Administration's estimate of 2025 fuel imports (measured in quads, or quadrillion British thermal units), the output of 300MW per VHTR reactor, and the comparative efficiency of hydrogen fuel compared to gasoline, you come up with a requirement of about 4,000 reactors.

Now these reactors are much smaller than most of the power reactors in operation, but that's still a significant number. However, the US used to have more than 1,000 land-based nuclear ballistic missiles in underground silos. The relatively small VHTR reactors might be housed in underground facilities that wouldn't be much bigger.

Anti-nuclear activists want hydrogen fuel to come from renewable energy sources, such as wind power. However, that arithmetic doesn't work. For example, California has the most developed wind power industry in the US. Its share of those reactors in 2025, based on population, would be about 480. The entire current wind development in California would only account for four reactors' worth of energy for hydrogen production.

Whatever your doubts about nuclear power, the hydrogen economy might at least be cheaper than occupying the Middle East indefinitely. Using a cost estimate of $1,200 per KW for the reactors, those 4,000 reactors would cost about $1,500bn.

The direct costs of the peacekeeping, if that's the term I'm looking for, in the Middle East, are about $100bn a year. Over 20 years, that's $2,000bn. Throw in the deferred military capital costs, not to mention the survivors' benefits, and nuclear powered hydrogen becomes quite competitive. The real hurdle with nukes is the capital cost. Maintenance, fuel and operation add up to less than 1 cent per kwh, and total energy content in a kilogramme of hydrogen or a gallon of gasoline is about 50 kwh, which would mean operating costs of about 50 cents a gallon.

There would still be a couple of issues. The first would be finding all the new uranium supplies to fuel the reactors. Geophysical surveys suggest there should be enough uranium in the US and Canada. ****

Then there is the problem of storing the used fuel. It would be necessary to find, or create, some caves in geologically stable formations such as the granite in the Northeastern US. That would be politically difficult.

Then we'd have to gather the helium that's used for heat transfer in the pebble bed reactors. There's a lot of helium in the universe; little of that is on our planet. The US produces a lot of helium, mostly in association with natural gas. The problem is helium reserves are running down and would be in decline by 2025. It might be necessary to go overseas to where new helium reserves have been discovered.

I'd considered smashing through the slate article in particular, debunking their art fantasy with panache. Heck, if I get mad, maybe I still will. One gets the impression that it would be more effective to simply TP the authors respective houses. They aren't listening.

So this great article from Past Peak is very timely: Earth is spinning toward many points of no return from the damage of global warming, after which disease, desolation and famine are inevitable, say scientists involved in an international report due Friday on the effects of climate change. [...]

In its first report in February, the panel, backed by the World Meteorological Organization and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Programme, concluded that "unequivocal" evidence shows industrial releases of greenhouse gases have warmed the Earth an average of about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century. That makes it "very likely" that temperatures will rise 3 to 7 degrees this century, depending on future emissions. [...]

"In a sense, we are looking at a series of tipping points for humanity and climate," says Richard Moss, senior director on climate at the United Nations Foundation.

Irreversible effects on plants, animals, farming and weather already are apparent, says biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas in Austin, one of the scientists assigned to review the report. Studies weighed in the report show that warming has eliminated about 70 animal species and affects 59% of wild species surveyed. [...]

Moss says the roughly 5-degree rise in global average temperatures envisioned in the February report will cause damage that cannot be recovered. He echoes a warning by NASA scientist James Hansen in 2004 that the window for action is only 10 years. The Stern Review, a high-profile report last year by the United Kingdom's chief economist, Nicholas Stern, warns of serious financial threats to agriculture and commerce. [...]

In Brussels this week, about 60 lead authors are working with representatives of more than 100 nations to distill, clarify and approve the panel's findings in a short summary for policymakers. The summary is out Friday; the scientific chapters arrive Tuesday.

Environmental and energy analyst Anthony Patt of Boston University, a report co-author, says the report will divide the possible effects of temperature increases this century into three grades: a 3.6-degree rise with warmer winters but few human catastrophes; an up to 7.2-degree rise that wealthy nations could handle but would prove calamitous to poor nations and many species; and an even higher rise, which "would prove difficult for any society to adapt to." [...]

What the panel's report will not establish is whether vast infestations by pine beetles in the forests of the western USA and Canada are tied to warming, Running says. Although many scientists believe there is a link, he says, research has not focused enough on temperature. "My nose is telling me there's a climate-change signal here, but the papers in print yet aren't doing a strong enough analysis."

Worldwide, thresholds were outlined last year in "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," a summary of tipping points for which British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote the foreword. They include:

• At a 3.6-degree rise, all Indian Ocean coral reefs go extinct, and 97% of the rest around the globe are "bleached" or severely damaged. All Arctic ice disappears.
• At a 5.4-degree increase, half of all nature reserves become unable to conserve native species. The Amazon rainforest disappears.
• At 7.2 degrees or higher, coastal flooding is seven times worse than in 1990. Malaria threatens 330 million more people a year, and hunger jeopardizes 600 million. Australia no longer can grow food.

All of this leaves aside the most extreme risks that Schneider calls the "dark edge of the bell curve": melting of the vast Antarctic ice sheets; shutdown of Atlantic Ocean circulation, which brings warm weather to the United Kingdom; and the release of more greenhouse gases frozen in the Arctic tundra.

Some scientists, such as Penn State's Michael Mann, worry that the panel's reports lag behind the latest science because of a six-month research cutoff before their release, a lifetime in climate study.

Last month, for instance, a report in Geophysical Research Letters found that ocean acidification from increased carbon dioxide is likely to wreak "havoc" for shellfish and coral and disrupt food chains.

A Colorado State University analysis in March said warming will make grazing lands less productive by 2050.

A University of Minnesota team reported that Lake Superior has warmed an average of 4.5 degrees since 1979, about twice the local atmospheric warming. [...]

James McCarthy of Harvard, incoming head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says the reality of warming is accepted, with regional climate-change trends already playing out as predicted. [Emphasis added]

A Question of Scale

Consider nuclear. To replace oil with nuclear, it would be necessary to build thousands of nuclear power plants, costing untold trillions of dollars. Even if that were desirable, it's an undertaking of unprecedented scale. As Cal Tech physicist David Goodstein, author of Out of Gas, has said:

To appreciate the magnitude of the Peak Oil crisis confronting us, it's necessary to come to grips with the colossal scale of the world's appetite for oil. Humanity currently consumes about 82 million barrels of oil per day, 30 billion barrels per year, and demand is increasing more or less exponentially (i.e., doubling at a constant rate). How big of a number is 30 billion barrels? It's roughly equal to one barrel per second, every second, for a thousand years. That's our annual consumption, and it's growing rapidly.

To put this in perspective, consider the debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). ANWR drilling proponents often talk about it in a context of "US energy independence." This is a cruel joke. Optimistic order-of-magnitude estimates of ANWR oil reserves are in the vicinity of 10 billion barrels. For the sake of argument, let's suppose 100% of this oil can be recovered (it can't). 10 billion barrels is enough to satisy world oil consumption for a mere four months. If it all went to the US, it would satisy US consumption for less than a year and a half. Then what?

Humanity will doubtless work to implement substitute sources of energy (e.g., nuclear, wind, solar) and to extract oil from currently marginal sources (e.g., tar sands). But, if world oil production does peak in the current decade as it appears poised to do, there seems to be zero chance that humanity can react quickly enough to prevent a catastrophic shock to industrial societies and the world in general. It's a question of scale. We should have gotten started long ago.

Consider nuclear. To replace oil with nuclear, it would be necessary to build thousands of nuclear power plants, costing untold trillions of dollars. Even if that were desirable, it's an undertaking of unprecedented scale. As Cal Tech physicist David Goodstein, author of Out of Gas, has said:

[I]n order to make enough nuclear energy to replace all of the fossil fuel we burn today, you would have to build ten thousand of the largest nuclear plants possible. Ten thousand. That's not impossible but it is certainly a daunting task. Even if you did that, the known uranium reserves would last at that burn rate for only one or two decades. [My emphasis]

And it doesn't stop there. Currently, 95% of transportation runs on oil. To employ nuclear energy to power transportation, it would be necessary to convert the generated energy to a form usable in transportation vehicles, such as hydrogen. That means the construction of thousands of hydrogen-generation facilities, the construction of a vast new infrastructure for the distribution and storage of hydrogen, and the conversion or replacement of hundreds of millions of vehicles to use hydrogen power. These changes clearly would take decades. ( LPT technology requires no new infrastructure.. auto and truck deals could serve this function.) If Peak Oil projections are correct, we don't have decades.

Or consider tar sands. In several regions of the world (notably, in Alberta, Canada) there are substantial amounts of oil in a form known variably as "tar sands" or "oil sands." Tar sands are formed when the light molecules of oil and gas evaporate from an oil field, leaving behind a thick, tarry sludge that over time mixes with sand and hardens. It is possible to recover the oil by mining and processing the tar sands, but the process is extremely energy-intensive (so the net energy gain is relatively low) and environmentally damaging.

Can tar sands provide enough energy quickly enough to defer Peak Oil? Again, it's a question of scale. Consider, for example, this description from Julian Darley, author of High Noon for Natural Gas:

The tar sands are definitely real, and some say they may even double output by 2010 — but that will only take them to 2 million barrels per day, which is not even 3% of [current] world demand, and by then this would only offset one year's predicted decline in global oil production [i.e., would only postpone Peak Oil by one year]. It might take another 5 years to gain another 1 million barrels a day, by which time we may have lost more than 10 million barrels a day in the wider world.

Of course, oil won't disappear all at once, overnight. But once production falls significantly short of demand the consequences will be immediate and severe. Perhaps most ominous is the dependence on oil of agriculture (fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation — not just farm machinery) and food distribution (processing, refrigeration, transportation).

To make matters worse, the world's appetite for oil continues to grow exponentially. In China and India, which together contain 2.4 billion people, energy demand is sky-rocketing. As the Christian Science Monitor reported on 20 Jan 2005:

The challenge is huge. For China and India to reach just one-quarter of the level of US oil consumption, world output would have to rise by 44 percent. To get to half the US level, world production would need to nearly double. That's impossible. The world's oil reserves are finite. And the view is spreading that global oil output will soon peak.

So, even if we could somehow find a way to replace the shortfall in energy supply as oil production falls, that won't nearly be enough. I.e., just holding energy production at current levels, keeping it from falling, isn't sufficient. To meet demand, energy production must grow exponentially — or else industrial society hits the wall and nations begin fighting tooth and nail for the energy that remains.

Where is the political leadership we need at this critical time? For all practical purposes, it doesn't exist, at least not here in the US. One is forced to conclude either those politicians are clueless — or in denial — about these issues or they've cynically decided that we, the people, cannot be persuaded to act until there is a deadly crisis unmistakably staring us in the face. I.e., those things have to get a whole lot worse before people will be willing to change how they live. In the meantime, a bearer of bad news is likely to get voted out of office, so the careerists lay low.

There are people who claim that there will automatically be a smooth transition to new energy sources, that demand will magically create its own supply, that energy is essentially infinite. Given the scale of the transition that must be made, though, such claims seem like wishful thinking.

The point is not that nothing can be done. The point is that the scale and immediacy of the problem is such that we should already be working flat out now to prepare for a post-oil world. If we get to work, it's possible that we can soften the landing. If we continue to let things slide, a hard crash is inevitable. In that event, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

[I]n order to make enough nuclear energy to replace all of the fossil fuel we burn today, you would have to build ten thousand of the largest nuclear plants possible. Ten thousand. That's not impossible but it is certainly a daunting task. Even if you did that, the known uranium reserves would last at that burn rate for only one or two decades. [My emphasis]

Aha - got some numbers I can apply my fifth grade math skills to.

We'll ignore a peak in uranium production and imagine there is enough for 500 years.
We'll ignore building a new transportation infrastructure. (Electric planes? hmmm.)
We'll ignore the as yet unknown costs of disposing of nuclear waste. (Never been done.)

How much does it cost to build a reactor? Well, if it cost 7 billion in the eighties, it is gonna cost us 10 billion now. ("Largest possible"). That is a round number I pulled out of my ass. It is probably more expensive.

I don't think the end of cheap oil will mean that things completely grind to a halt a la James Kunstler. But what seems like good news may actually be bad news. Very bad news. Why?

Humans, like other organisms, generally take the path of least (short-term) resistance. It's our nature. In the Peak Oil context, the path of least resistance won't be to change how we organize cities and suburbs; or to switch to public transportation; or even to drive significantly smaller, more efficient vehicles. Nor will it be most of the other alternatives that could meaningfully reduce the demand for liquid fuels.

Instead, the path of least resistance will be to substitute other liquid fuels for gasoline and diesel, those other fuels probably being ethanol made from plant matter and, most alarmingly, synthetic fuel made from coal. There is an enormous amount of coal remaining, and if we put all of that carbon in the atmosphere the results will be deadly.

As people flail about for ways to cope with increasing shortfalls in oil production, they will act hurriedly, thoughtlessly, and they will almost certainly exacerbate global warming, perhaps catastrophically. That will be the path of least resistance.

In a BBC op-ed, author David Strahan makes a similar point. Excerpts:

[I]t is quite possible to run out of oil and pollute the planet to destruction simultaneously.

In fact peak oil could even make emissions worse if it drives us to exploit the wrong kinds of fuel.

Burning rainforest and peatlands to create palm oil plantations for biofuels releases vast amounts of CO2, and has already made Indonesia, according to some ways of calculating it, the world's third biggest emitter after the US and China.

Synthetic transport fuels made from natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch process emit even more carbon on a well-to-wheels basis than conventional crude; and when the feedstock is coal, the emissions double.

None of these alternatives are likely to fill the gap left by conventional crude — at least, not in time.

But because they are so much more carbon intensive, it is quite easy to conjure scenarios in which we still suffer fuel shortages while emitting even more CO2 than in the current business-as-usual forecast — the worst of all possible worlds.

Although these fuels are likely to prove inadequate, we may be driven to use them because cleaner alternatives are even more inadequate, for a variety of reasons.

Biofuels can be produced sustainably and with real CO2 reductions, but in the industrialised world there simply isn't the land.

In the developing world, however, there are vast swathes of land which could be put to sugar cane in a sustainable fashion; but the scale of the task of replacing crude oil would still be monumental.

I calculate that to substitute the fuel lost through a post-peak oil production annual decline of 3% would mean planting about 200,000 sq km — equivalent to the land area of Cuba, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea — every year.

Alternatively, if we decided to run Britain's road transport system, say, on cleanly produced hydrogen — electrolysing water using non-CO2-emitting forms of generation — our options would be:

• 67 Sizewell B nuclear power stations
• a solar array covering every inch of Norfolk and Derbyshire combined
• or a wind farm bigger than the entire southwest region of England.

When oil production starts to fall, the economic impacts could well be devastating.

Soaring crude prices could tip the world into a depression deeper than that of the 1930s, and collapsing stock markets cripple our ability to finance the expensive clean energy infrastructure we need.

As the unemployment lines grow, the political will to tackle climate change may be sapped by the need to keep the lights burning as cheaply as possible.

Many environmentalists seem to dismiss or ignore peak oil because they simply cannot see it as significant when compared to climate change.

But this is to miss the point.

Oil depletion is deadly serious in its own right, but it also has the capacity both to worsen emissions and destroy the wealth needed to fight global warming.

For this reason - among others - it too has the power to destroy our civilisation. [Emphasis added]

Desperate people do desperate things. Fuel shortages will be an immediate, concrete problem staring people in the face. Global warming will seem, by comparison, an abstraction somewhere off in the future. And it will be easy for people to rationalize that their little contribution to global warming is an insignificant drop in a very big bucket; meanwhile, they need a way to get to work, to shop, to heat their homes. They are going to want fuel; they're not going to care much where it comes from.

Of course, there are significant wild cards in any attempts to project the future. Biotechnology and nanotechnology, especially, have the potential to radically transform the equation. (And also to create their own brand of havoc.) But the next couple of decades are pivotal, and the sheer scale of the problem means that new technologies may arrive too late. Enormous damage is already being done, right now, in the race to produce biofuels. The colossal scale of the world's thirst for fuel pretty much guarantees that in the race for profits all sorts of bad ideas will be pushed into large-scale use without due regard for the consequences. We suffer from a kind of technological monoculture and a monoculture of the mind that causes us to risk way too much on a few throws of the dice.

If we act without thinking, we're guaranteed to follow the path of least (short-term) resistance. But it's the wrong path. It remains to be seen if humans are smart enough to forego short-term convenience to gain long-term survival. Are we?

10,000 by 10,000,000,000 - I think we know where this is going! That is DANG expensive, and frankly, it is inconcievable. I do not think we have the available energy resources to build 100 of those plants worldwide before depletion kicks like a mule.

If you run your car on recycled fry oil or biofuel generated from waste, awesome. But growing food crops to turn them into fuel (and ripping up rainforests to do it) is out and out lunacy. Nothing shows our addiction to fossil fuels more starkly than our willingness to bid up the price of food crops — so we can price the world's poor out of the market, take food out of their mouths, and set fire to it.

It's simple really. There's a finite amount of corn and other crops in the world. They go to the highest bidder. There isn't enough to feed the world as it is. But now we in the First World want to take a big piece of that pie and pour it into our gas tanks. Every bushel that goes for fuel is a bushel that cannot go for food. People must go hungry so we can drive our SUVs to Wal-Mart.

But it's actually worse than even that. Many of today's biofuels are an environmental disaster, too, worse for the planet than petroleum. George Monbiot explains:

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless.

In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow – it is released again when the fuel is burnt. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.

In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants — if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.

So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 this column warned that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are, by definition, richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats....Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn’t materialise for many years. They are happening already.

Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world....According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from both maize and wheat.

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burnt, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or ten times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes TEN TIMES as much climate change as ordinary diesel. [...]

The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram.

In February the European Commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel.

The British government says it "will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply." But it will not require them to do anything. It can't: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules. And even "sustainable" biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a "second generation" of biofuels, made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have been done.

We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugarcane. Even then, the targets should be set low and increased only cautiously. I suggest a five-year freeze. [...]

You can join the campaign at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk. [Emphasis added]

Like addicts everywhere, we pretend not to see the damage our addiction does. And biofuels make denial easy. They seem so green. And who really knows what's going on in Indonesia or the Amazon, anyway? Out of sight, out of mind. Out of our minds is more like it.

We do what we do because we are too lazy and too greedy to increase fuel efficiency, drive smaller vehicles, use public transportation. It's too much trouble. We'd rather starve the world's poor, strip off the last remaining rainforests, use the atmosphere for our sewer.

Not always intentionally, perhaps. Many people want to do the right thing (at least if it's not too inconvenient), and fuel from plants sounds like it ought to be the right thing. But just because something sounds green doesn't mean it is. Good intentions alone are worth nothing. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions. We have to realistically assess (take a fearless inventory of) the net effect of whatever steps we take from here on out. We have to determine if they do more harm than good. We have to stop kidding ourselves. We no longer have a lot of room for error.

One hundred trillion dollars. Now we know why the fed is printing money, no?

So, the next time someone starts spouting off about green nukes, don’t kick then in the nuts.

Uranium is ubiquitous

Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive element. While traces of uranium occur almost everywhere on Earth, the highest concentration is found in the Earth's crust. For example, there are about 3 milligrams of uranium per tonne of sea water, and up to 4 grams per tonne of Australian coal. The rocks that are mined for uranium in Australia contain about 3 kilograms of uranium per tonne.

Large amounts of energy are obtained by splitting uranium atoms

Uranium has only become valuable since the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945, during World War II. This explosion confirmed the theory that energy could be released by splitting uranium atoms. The amount of energy released is calculated by using Einstein's famous equation, E = mc² .

Uranium is a very high-grade energy source. In practice, about 120,000 tonnes of black coal (350,000 of brown coal) would need to be burnt to get as much energy as could be obtained from 1 tonne of uranium fuel, of which 35 kilograms is fissionable. It takes 140 tonnes of uranium ore to make 27 tonnes of enriched uranium fuel, of which 1 tonne is fissionable.

Electricity can be generated from uranium

Most of the world's mined uranium (and all of Australia's) is used to generate electricity in nuclear power stations. A controlled atomic process produces heat, which converts water to steam to drive the turbines which generate electricity.

Nuclear energy currently provides about 17 per cent of global electrical power, but in France it provides 75 per cent of electricity.

Nuclear power: advantages and disadvantages

Unlike coal-fired power stations, nuclear reactors do not generate carbon dioxide and atmospheric pollution. Every tonne of mined uranium used for fuel in place of coal saves the emission of 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. However, there are disadvantages because of the danger of ionising radiation (Box 1: The danger of ionising radiation) that can come from mining and transporting uranium, accidents, and disposing of nuclear wastes.

Australian uranium is exported

Australia does not generate any nuclear power but does mine and export uranium. Australian mines provide about 22 per cent of the world's uranium, second only to Canada. In 2004-05 Australia produced more than 10,000 tonnes of uranium oxide, generating over $A475 million of export revenue.

Australian uranium goes only to countries that undertake to use it solely for peaceful purposes. Many of these countries have insufficient supplies of coal or hydroelectricity or choose to use nuclear energy because it is more economical and it reduces atmospheric pollution.

The three mines policy restricted uranium mining

In 1984 the federal Labor government introduced their three mines policy. It confined Australia's uranium production to the three sites already being mined: Ranger, Nabarlek and Olympic Dam. At the time, the mining industry felt that this unnecessarily restricted uranium mining.

Present government policy is to allow uranium to be mined and exported

The three mines policy was abandoned when the Coalition government was elected in March 1996. The Coalition's policy is to develop the export potential of Australia's uranium industry by allowing mining and export of uranium under strict international agreements designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Today the Ranger mine in the Northern Territory and the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia continue to operate, but the Nabarlek mine has closed. There is now a third uranium mine operating (Beverley), with approval given for a fourth mine (Honeymoon). Both of these mines are in South Australia.

Uranium mining can have an impact on Aboriginal groups

Mining in Australia's remote areas can be controversial when it is carried out in places that have great significance for Aboriginal people. The question of Aboriginal land rights is a complex one. Some areas in many States have now reverted to Aboriginal title, meaning that the Aboriginal people in the area are, as a group, the legal owners of the land, which they may then lease to governments, individuals or corporations.

In September 2002 the company responsible for the Jabiluka mine site in the Northern Territory announced that the mine would not go ahead without the consent of the local Aboriginal people.

Environmental effects of uranium mining

Conservationists point out that the effects of mining can go far beyond the small area disturbed in the operation. A mine cannot operate in isolation. It requires the construction of roads, the transport of material and the disposal of wastes.

Australia's Uranium and Who Buys It

(August 2006)

• Uranium is part of Australia's mining heritage, though only three mines are currently operating. Two more are proposed.
• Australia's uranium reserves are the world's largest, with 24% of the total. Production and exports exceed 11,000 tonnes of uranium oxide (9300 tU) per year.
• Australia's uranium is used solely for electricity. It is supplied under arrangements which ensure that none finds its way into nuclear weapons.
• In the five years to mid 2006 Australia exported 47,524 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate with a value of over A$ 2.1 billion.

In the 1930s ores were mined at Radium Hill and Mount Painter in SA to recover radium for medical purposes. As a result a few hundred kilograms of uranium were also produced.

Uranium ores as such were mined and treated in Australia from the 1950s until 1971. Radium Hill, SA, Rum Jungle, NT, and Mary Kathleen, Queensland, were the largest producers of uranium (as yellowcake). Production ceased either when ore reserves were exhausted or contracts were filled. Sales were to supply material primarily intended for USA and UK weapons programs at that time. However, much of it was used for electricity production.

The development of civil nuclear power stimulated a second wave of exploration activity in the late 1960s.

Mary Kathleen began recommissioning its mine and mill in 1974. Other developments were deferred pending the findings of the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, and its decision in the light of these. Mary Kathleen recommenced production in 1976.

The Commonwealth Government announced in 1977 that new uranium mining was to proceed, commencing with the Ranger project in the Northern Territory. This mine opened in 1981.

In 1979, Queensland Mines opened Nabarlek in the same region of Northern Territory. The orebody was mined out in one dry season and the ore stockpiled for treatment from 1980. The mine site is now rehabilitated.

At the end of 1982 the Mary Kathleen mine was depleted and finally closed down.

A brief history of Australian uranium mining is appended

The Mines

Ranger opened in 1981 at a production rate of approximately 3300 tonnes per year of uranium oxide and has since been expanded to 5500 t/yr capacity. Sales are to Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Sweden, UK, Canada & USA. Ranger is owned by Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA), now a subsidiary of Rio Tinto.

During 1988 the Olympic Dam project, then a joint venture of Western Mining Corporation and BP Minerals, commenced operations. This is a large underground mine in central South Australia, producing copper, gold and uranium. Annual production capacity for uranium oxide has been expanded from 1800 to 4600 tonnes, with sales to USA, Canada, Sweden, UK, Belgium, France, Finland, South Korea and Japan. It is now owned by BHP Billiton, following its 2005 takeover of WMC Resources.

Both Ranger and the now-closed and rehabilitated Nabarlek mines are on aboriginal land in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory, close to the Kakadu National Park (in fact the Ranger leases are surrounded by the National Park). Ranger is served by the township of Jabiru, constructed largely for that purpose. During the operation of Nabarlek mine, employees were based in Darwin and commuted by air.

Aboriginal people receive royalties of 4.25% on sales of uranium from Northern Territory mines. The total received simply from Ranger is now over $207 million, and $14 million came from Nabarlek.

The Olympic Dam mine is on formerly pastoral land in the middle of South Australia. A town to accommodate 3500 people was built at Roxby Downs to service the mine.

Following the 1996 change in government policy, three other projects were brought forward:

• Jabiluka, NT
• Honeymoon, SA
• Beverley, SA

Jabiluka will be an extension of the Ranger operation but awaits Aboriginal approval for development. The last two are small in situ leach operations.

Beverley started operation late in 2000. It is Australia's first in situ leach (ISL) mine and is licensed to produce 1180 t/yr U₃O₈ (1000 tU), and reached this level in 2004.

Honeymoon received government approval to proceed with ISL mine development in November 2001, but is reassessing ore reserves and is not yet operational.

WMC Resources committed A$ 90 million over two years to assess the potential for doubling the size of Olympic Dam and in particular to take the resource categorisation of the southern orebody through to proven reserves and thus demonstrate the viability of a much expanded operation - up to 15,000 t/yr U₃O₈. The capital cost involved would be A$5 billion. The study will include 72 km of drilling on the southern deposit and assessing mining options including possibly a massive open pit to access the orebody which starts 350 metres down. Proved and probable reserves are some 376,000 t U₃O₈ (319,000 tU), the total resource being some 1.6 million tonnes (1.35 MtU), over one third of the world's known total. Present production capacity is 4500 t/yr U₃O₈ with 235,000 t copper.

Australian Uranium Production and Exports

For tU, divide by 1.1793.

Production and export by calendar year:

* $A from declared net FOB estimates, $US calculated from this.

Uranium Exports From Australia

Australian exports over the last three years have averaged almost 10,000 t/yr U₃O₈, providing about 22% of world uranium supply from mines. Uranium comprises about 40% of the country's energy exports (4600 PJ in 2004-05) in thermal terms.

Australia's uranium is sold strictly for electrical power generation only, and safeguards are in place to ensure this. Australia is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state. Its safeguards agreement under the NPT came into force in 1974 and it was the first country in the world to bring into force the Additional Protocol in relation to this - in 1997.

In the five years to mid 2006 Australia exported 47,524 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate (40,300 tU) with a value of over A$ 2.1 billion.  The nations which currently purchase Australia's uranium are set out below.  All have a large commitment to nuclear power.

The USA generates around 30% of the world's nuclear power. Much of its uranium comes from Canada, but Australia is a major source. Japan and South Korea however are important customers due to their increasing dependence on nuclear.

Customer countries' contracted imports of Australian uranium oxide concentrate may be summarised as follows, (but see also the reactor table):

USA: c 4100 tonnes per year - 103 reactors (supplying 20% of electricity).

Japan: c 2700 tonnes per year - 55 reactors (supplying 30% of electricity)

South Korea: c 1000 tonnes per year - 20 reactors (40% of electricity)

EU: about 3200 tonnes per year, including:

Spain: 9 reactors (24% of electricity)
France: 59 reactors (77% of electricity)
UK: 23 reactors (20% of electricity)
Sweden: 10 reactors (50% of electricity)
Germany: 17 nuclear reactors (30% of electricity)
Belgium: 7 reactors (55% of electricity)
Finland: 4 reactors (27% of electricity)

Australia is a preferred uranium supplier to world, especially East Asian, markets. It could readily increase its share of the world market because of its low cost reserves and its political and economic stability.

Australia has 38% of the world's lowest-cost uranium resources (under US$ 40/kg). Nearly all of Australia's 714,000 tonnes of Reasonably Assured Resources of uranium alone to US$ 80/kg U (US$ 30/lb U₃O₈) are in the under US$ 40/kg U category.

This figure compares with Kazakhstan (378 000 tU), Canada (345 000 tonnes), South Africa (177 000 tonnes) and Namibia (180 000 tonnes). The following table shows these plus Inferred Resources in the category to $130/kg:

Known Recoverable Resources* of Uranium

* Reasonably Assured Resources plus Inferred Resources, to US$ 130/kg U, 1/1/05, from OECD NEA & IAEA, Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand.

World Markets

In the 1980s large stockpiles were built up by utilities, totalling about four times annual consumption. Prices dropped and mine production fell. Little exploration for uranium has been done since then. Today world uranium consumption is about 80,000 tonnes U₃O₈ and production is only about 42,000 tonnes, the balance being from stockpiles and recycled military uranium. Prices rose briefly in 1995-96 but then declined. They have been rising more strongly since early 2001.

See also information papers on Uranium Markets and World Uranium Mining.

12 months to 30 June each year

FOB, 12 months to 30 June each year

General Sources:
ABARE, DITR, ANSTO,
ERA & WMC quarterly and Annual Reports.

Appendix

A brief history of Australian uranium mining

The existence of uranium deposits in Australia has been known since the 1890s. Some uranium ores were mined in the 1930s at Radium Hill and Mount Painter, South Australia, to recover minute amounts of radium for medical purposes. Some uranium was also recovered and used as a bright yellow pigment in glass and ceramics.

Following requests from the British and United States governments, systematic exploration for uranium began in 1944. In 1948 the Commonwealth Government offered tax-free rewards for the discovery of uranium orebodies. As a result, uranium was discovered at Rum Jungle in 1949, and in the South Alligator River region (1953) of the Northern Territory, then at Mary Kathleen (1954) and Westmoreland (1956) in north west Queensland.

In 1952 a decision was taken to mine Rum Jungle, NT and it opened in 1954 as a Commonwealth Government enterprise. Radium Hill, SA was reopened in 1954. Mining began at Mary Kathleen, Qld in 1958 and in the South Alligator region, NT in 1959. Production at most mines ceased by 1964 and Rum Jungle closed in 1971, either when ore reserves were exhausted or contracts were filled. Sales of some 7730 tonnes of uranium from these operations were to supply material primarily intended for USA and UK weapons programs at that time. However much of it was used in civil power production.

The development of nuclear power stimulated a second wave of exploration activity in the late 1960s. In the Northern Territory, Ranger was discovered in 1969, Nabarlek and Koongarra in 1970, and Jabiluka in 1971. New sales contracts (for electric power generation) were made by Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd., Queensland Mines Ltd. (for Nabarlek), and Ranger Uranium Mines Pty. Ltd., in the years 1970-72.

Successive governments (both Liberal Coalition and Labor) approved these, and Mary Kathleen began recommissioning its mine and mill in 1974. Consideration by the Commonwealth Government of additional sales contracts was deferred pending the findings of the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, and its decision in the light of these. Mary Kathleen recommenced production of uranium oxide in 1976, after the Commonwealth Government had taken up a 42% share of the company.

The Commonwealth Government announced in 1977 that new uranium mining was to proceed, commencing with the Ranger project in the Northern Territory. In 1979 it decided to sell its interest in Ranger, and as a result Energy Resources of Australia Ltd was set up to own and operate the mine. The mine opened in 1981, producing 2800 t/yr of uranium, sold to utilities in several countries. Production over three years to mid 2002 averaged 3533 t/yr of uranium.

In 1980, Queensland Mines opened Nabarlek in the same region of Northern Territory. The orebody was mined out in one dry season and the ore stockpiled for treatment from 1980. A total of 10,858 tonnes of uranium oxide were produced and sold to Japan, Finland and France, over 1981-88. The mine site is now rehabilitated.

At the end of 1982 Mary Kathleen in Queensland had depleted its ore and finally closed down after 4802 tonnes of uranium oxide had been produced in its second phase of operation. This then became the site of Australia's first major rehabilitation project on a uranium mine site, which was completed at the end of 1985. The Rum Jungle Rehabilitation project also took place in the 1980s.

In the 1983 federal election the Australian Labor Party (ALP) won government and in 1984 the ALP National Conference amended the Party platform to what became known as "the three mines policy", nominating Ranger, Nabarlek and Olympic Dam as the only projects from which exports would be permitted. Provisional approvals for marketing from other prospective uranium mines were cancelled. This policy persisted until the change of government in 1996, despite the fact that Nabarlek ceased production by 1988.

During 1988 Western Mining Corporation's Olympic Dam project commenced operations. This is a large underground mine at Roxby Downs, South Australia, producing copper, with uranium and gold as by-products. Annual production of uranium started at some 1300 tonnes, with sales to Sweden, UK, South Korea and Japan. After a A$ 1.9 billion expansion project, production increased to over 4000 tonnes uranium per year by mid 2001.

Both Ranger and Nabarlek mines are on aboriginal land in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory, close to the Kakadu National Park. In fact the Ranger and two other leases are surrounded by the National Park but were deliberately excluded from it when the park was established. Ranger is served by the township of Jabiru, constructed largely for that purpose. Nabarlek employees were based in Darwin and commuted by air.

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