Will Peak Uranium Hit Nuclear Plants?
The safety of nuclear plants is often debated, but we rarely hear about another potential issue for nuclear energy: peak uranium. That’s the point in time when when the maximum global uranium production is reached and begins to enter a permanent decline. And while we’ve known for some time that high-quality uranium supplies have been declining for the past 50 years, nuclear operators are finally getting nervous.
Kansai Electric Power, a uranium supplier in Japan, is in the midst of buying uranium mines to secure long-term supply. The company’s manager, however, believes that no amount of money will be able to buy all the uranium necessary for the years ahead.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the rapid expansion of nuclear power will almost double the world’s need for uranium by 2030. But unlike with peak oil, uranium fuel can be reprocessed— meaning that uranium supplies can theoretically be secured for hundreds of years.
Advanced reactors, fuel cycle technologies, and alternative fuels like thorium just need to be explored more thoroughly. And if things get desperate, we can start looking into unconventional uranium sources like phosphates, seawater, and uraniferous coal ash. Perhaps the current uranium panic will stoke interest in such exploration.
Photo CC-licensed by Flickr user Bionerd
There’s a lot of uranium in the US that isn’t being mined, not only in the western states. There are also thought to be significant uranium deposits in the Appalachian mountains on the US east coast.
The US also has a stupendous amount of highly enriched uranium that is great fuel, but is currently prohibited by US law for being used as fuel. This was done as a knee jerk reaction to three mile island.
The US is mostly alone in prohibiting the use of reprocessed material. A majority of the nuclear powered nations use it to power their reactors. If there is ever a real uranium shortage, that US law would only need to be overturned to give the US a huge supply of fuel.
might as well use solar energy to convert waste uranium into the more reactive stuff using electron bombardment. or revive old research to use lighter reactive substances in reactors.
I understood from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) that the current crunch date for uranium is around 75 years from now, based upon currently known reserves and deposits and ignoring any new technology or new reserves that may be found along the way.
Nuclear operators are nervous because they may have to pay higher prices than they have historically, thus shaving their profit margins, not because there is any lack of resource as you imply. There is a lack of enrichment capacity in the western world, but that is not the same thing at all. We can build new capacity (and the French currently are doing just that).
It is absolutely normal for companies involved in the processing or use of uranium to attempt to secure long-term supplies in order that they can control their expenses.
Unlike many metals uranium is not only economic to extract from rare high-grade deposits. Indeed many of the USA’s own uranium comes from very low grade deposits. I’m assuming that high quality equals high grade in your terms.
If you want to find fault with the expansion of the nuclear industry do it on basis of long-term cost to the tax payer, not on scare stories about security of uranium supply.