Nuclear Power has no Bright Future.

The recent dramatic rise in oil prices has encouraged most governments to back energy polices which do not include oil. Most countries have signed up to policies which will cut carbon emissions. To achieve both of these goals they are turning to nuclear energy.

The European Union was unable to agree to a timetable to manage climate change because they could not agree on costs and the type of acceptable alternative fuels. MaCain is promising 40 new nuclear power plants by 2030, while Barack Obama has concluded that they can not achieve their climate change goals, unless they include nuclear power. The French are already committed to nuclear power.

But where is all the uranium ore going to come from to fuel these power stations? Geologists think that only 5.5 million metric tones can be mined economically. While the International Atomic Energy Agency argues that the nuclear power stations in use today use 70,000 metric tons a year. That is without any increase in nuclear power.

If we really wanted to use nuclear powered electricity for all of our energy needs, could it really be done quickly? Not only would we have to build plants to replace the existing nuclear plants, we would also have to replace all existing fossil fuel plants, as well as build extra nuclear power plants to allow us independence from oil.

Figures for the amount of plants we will need vary, but we are looking at increasing energy production by at least 17 times its present output! That could account for at least 1,000,000 tons of uranium ore each year! All our known reserves would be used up within 5 years. Geologists think there is about 35 million tons of uranium ore, much of it uneconomical to mine. That would last only about 30 years.

If the aim is to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear energy, how would this be possible after the uranium has run out?

If nuclear power was be introduced on a step by step basis there would still be a problem. The G8 countries have agreed to cut carbon emissions by 50% and this is to be achieved by 2050. Nuclear power will take up the slack. If they are to produce the energy needed the uranium would run out by 2050. All this will do is buy use 42 years!

Mining is usually done on an ad hoc basis. We don’t try to mine everything, we feed it into the system as and when we need it. While large areas of the planet have yet to be explored for uranium. So there might be some large stocks out there. Often we find that there is more of a mineral than we expect to find. Look at how many new gas fields we have discovered.

But until we know how much is out there, how can we base an alternative energy plan around nuclear power? Building nuclear power stations are very expensive, and just consider how many we will have to build. Can we really depend upon a nuclear powered solution based upon the stocks of uranium that we know about?

What if those new stocks are in countries we have blacklisted? What if it is to be found in Syria, North Korea or Iran? There is also the possibility that those stocks are in areas we can not mine.
We are going to have to depend upon our ability to recover uranium from the spent uranium fuels themselves. However, a report by the International Atomic Energy found that in 2004 two thirds of all uranium used was being mined, and not recycled. A large part of the remainder came from army stock piles. We are going to have recycle about a million tons a year if we really want to convert to nuclear energy. This is going to be a huge task and at what financial cost?

One solution put forward is to use breeder reactors. They tend to create more nuclear fuel than they use. In America some breeder reactors were introduced but they stopped in the 1990s. Only a few are in use in the world today. The real technology to make these breeder reactors is simply not in existence yet. We still have to get it up and running. Also they can be used to make nuclear weapons and they would be controversial.

At best nuclear power could only be used as part of the solution, and even then as part of a short term solution. Unless we find more uranium it can not be the solution to our energy needs. Unless we stop and think this through we are going to be facing the same energy shortages we face now. All we are doing is putting it off for another few decades at best.