25 Replies to “Powering America: Uranium Mining and Milling”

  1. Don’t believe it. They didn’t show the two headed veteran miner or his one eyed dog. /sarc

  2. Probably won’t see it in my lifetime, but uranium will become the future energy source for residential use, possibly as a community technology initially.
    Stable population growth as a result of a world wide “social contract” replacing neo-malthusiing thinking being discredited. the Social Contract will become the he base for a independent life style. Having a community or residential energy source will provide the independance.
    Prior to the effective development of fuel tanks for gasoline in automobiles did anyone feel comfortable transporting or carrying around this extremely volatile material?
    Acceptance of uranium is only waiting for a suitable containment and recycling process. Manufactured hysteria will be less successful with increasing education of the containment processes and the effectiveness of this source of heating. Cheers;

  4. The fact that early gasoline was a worthless, useless, nuisance, merely the byproduct of
    valuable kerosene being refined from crude oil, drove all the needed inventions and research
    which helped perfect the internal combustion engine. The energy and money locked up in a waste
    product, gasoline was to become the key to world prosperity on a gigantic scale.

  5. PS I once owned an old dictionary printed around 1905.
    When you looked up “uranium”, it was defined as “a worthless white metal”.

  6. I have a copy of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Its aeronautical section is meager too 🙂

  7. Uranium isn’t powering America. Government subsidies are floating the nuclear industry.

  8. “Uranium isn’t powering America. Government subsidies are floating the nuclear industry.”
    This may be very true,LAStupid. But nuclear provides power 24/7/365(366),unlike all the “green” power scams,everyone of which are highly subsidized,then go bankrupt. I see economics is also on the list of must study for ya.And yes.Nuclear can be safely stored.And more people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car,than have been killed by nuclear reactor accidents.

  9. Thorium is the future of nuclear. Non-pressurized, non-dihydrogen monoxide cooling systems. Safer reactors. It also produces daughter products that are less dangerous, and decay far sooner. Plus, the Thorium is more thoroughy ‘burned’ compared with Uranium. U235 fuel rods become inefficient after only 2% of the fuel is used, as the daughter products interfere with the nuclear reaction.
    Governments never ran with Thorium though, as it doesn’t product Plutonium for weapons.

  11. Uranium isn’t powering America…
    But if it were, it would be Canadian uranium, unless Obama could get a deal from some communist country.
    These days though, if we sell to the USA better get payment up front, and maybe not in $US.

  12. How does one use the “Categories” like Gopher news, is that a Twitter thing?
    I had some gopher news today, in my yard; a big fat one, standing tall, laughing at me in the knowledge that by the time I retrieved my rifle, retrieved the ammo, and removed the government required firearm locking device, he would be safely back in his hole rutting.

  13. When you total up the extractable energy in a contant measure such as Mtoe or PetaJoules, it turns out that Saskatchewan uranium provides more energy to the US than does all of Canada’s oil and gas exports combined.

  14. DanBC – Plutonium for US weapons has exclusively been made in US government reactors at Hanford, and Savanah River. It is inefficient to use commercial reactors, as the fuel must be removed before the Pu 240 fraction grows to 6.5%, generally after just a couple months of operation. India wants to run its industry on thorium, but no one in the world presently runs a commercial Th power reactor .

  15. nuclear provides power 24/7/365(366)
    That reminds me of another problem with nuclear: you can’t adjust it! It’s always on 100%. No good.
    Unlike almost everyone here, I understand economics just fine. I have to lecture so often this place is pretty much the ‘LAS institute for the disadvantaged’.
    And more people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car,than have been killed by nuclear reactor accidents.
    Uh I know that nuclear’s safety record is pretty good but that statement is flat out false.

  16. You may have a slight awareness of some minor aspects of economics, but that leaves you basically ignorant of how a nuclear power plant functions.
    Cheers

  17. LAS 11:05 PM
    “That reminds me of another problem with nuclear: you can’t adjust it! It’s always on 100%.”
    Really then how do you explain how they throttle the nuclear powered ships and submarines? There is a problem with the time it takes to fire them up and shut them down but adjusting is an everyday thing. That’s what them people in the control rooms do…doncha know.
    “Uh I know that nuclear’s safety record is pretty good but that statement is flat out false.”
    Kennedy’s car claimed at least one life while nuclear power in North America has yet to injure anyone. Don’t nention Chernobyl because that was the fault of such as your ilk…..ignorant and stupid to boot.

  18. I believe a few people died in the cleanup of Fukushima, not from radiation, but they likely wouldn’t have if it wasn’t at risk. It might be possible that adjusting coal for its health costs would make nukes cheaper than it, then Nat. gas would be cheapest until prices go up quite a bit.

  19. Rob, three plant workers died at Fukushima. One was up in the plant crane at the time of the earthquake. Two were in the plant yard when the tsunami came over the sea wall. None died from radiation related causes or were injured during the earthquake and tsunami or during the recovery.
    LAS, nuclear is intended for baseload electricity. That’s because except for hydro, nuclear has the lowest operating cost of any form of electricity generation. But yes, nuclear can be adjusted to meet load requirements. France typically has two of their nuclear plants engaged in load following. What you may or may not know about economics is irrelevant. What you know about power system operation is obviously zero.

  20. Searching ‘deaths per terawatt hour’ the first link seems pretty detailed: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
    Nuclear including 56 direct deaths from Chernobyl is twice as safe as the next best, Hydroelectric, unless you add in an estimate of 4000 radiation deaths from Chernobyl. Coal is far and away the worst because of mining and transportation risk, and they factor in deaths from pollution which seem to be much better accurately determined than radiation deaths from even Chernobyl. It seems there are 8 reactors like Chern in operation although they have had domes built over them. Solar is even more dangerous than Nukes with Chernobyl radiation because of rooftop accidents while wind is better. Oil is high with peat and biomass up there as well because of mining risk and air pollution. (real air pollution, which biomass ie wood burning I’ve heard is worse than oil for) Natural gas is quite low compared to the high ones and high compared to the low ones. (Nukes .04 per TWH, wind .15, Gas 4, Oil 36, Coal from 15 US to 278 China)
    It would be interesting if someone could factor in lives saved because of the lower cost of fuels which could be an overwhelming number compared to losses. I suspect that gas and nuclear would look like the future especially since Chernobyl isn’t going to be built again, while at some point solar and wind could be worth it if they get close to oil and coal in cost.

  21. nuclear has the lowest operating cost of any form of electricity generation
    BS piles and piles of BS. Don’t lecture me when you are clearly clueless. Nuclear is uneconomic and gets crushed by natural gas, which is a far superior option.

  22. Rob, you can find the list of Russian reactors here:
    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-O-S/Russia–Nuclear-Power/
    There’s 11 RBMK reactors, none of which have full containment domes. Note that all of the oldeer VVER 440 reactors don’t have full containment either. Only the more modern VVER 1000 reactors have full containment.
    However, all of the RBMKs were upgraded in the early 1990s to avoid the power surge problem that destroyed Chernobyl unit 4.
    with respect to wind, it turns out that wind is roughly as dangerous as coal-fired generation (leaving out any reference to emissions). Wind has about 50 fatalities associated with it, nearly all from falls by maintainers. The remainder were some people killed on a German highway from a flying detached blade, and one parachutist. But wind produces so little energy compared to nuclear that the ratio is quite bad.
    Gas is bad mostly because of the transport system. There was a famous accident in the 1990s when gas leaked from a pipeline and was set of by sparks from the wheels of a passing train. The fatalities were in the hundreds. The average leakage rate from Russian pipelines is about 3%.
    LAS, your not worthy of being lectured. You’re only worth being dismissed with contempt as a witless moron.

  24. Undoubtably Nuclear has a low operating cost, it would have to considering the upfront cost. I’m sure it can be a good investment depending on how much you value the safety and calculate the potential for a serious accident from an attack or what have you but obviously if you have to specify the low operating cost it has high costs. Does that translate to Nukes being the cheapest over their life span? I would think it’s possible but then upfront costs matter in terms of borrowing costs and the cost compared to the size of the economy. It probably depends most on whether generation costs go up or down over that time. In that sense, it makes good sense to have a good number of nukes to guarantee generation but going full bore could also leave us with having spent a lot of % of our GDP for an economy down the road with comparable power options and a much larger economic base to pay for it. Clearly it’s no cut and dried thing, and with current gas prices I would have no problem agreeing gas is clearly a great option right now.

  25. Rob: “Does that translate to Nukes being the cheapest over their life span?”
    Excellent question. No, not necessarily. It’s a complex relationship between day-to-day expenses and upfront capital expenditures. What I can tell you are the important variables in making such determination. For nuclear, the most important variable is the long term interest rate on capital. For fossil, particularly gas, the most important variable is the long term fuel price. In general terms, fuel price is much more significant than maintenance costs. The latter are highly predictable over the life of the plant wherease fossil fuel costs are not.
    So it’s situational. How much do fuels cost to move them into a particular area? For Alberta and Saskatchewan, fossil fuel costs are cheap. Hence, they are usually the best option. For Ontario particularly because of transport costs, they are not, hence nuclear tends to be significanty cheaper over time.
    So in addition to capital cost and fuel cost, geography is a third key factor to consider when deciding what’s the cheapest option to build.
    “Clearly it’s no cut and dried thing, and with current gas prices I would have no problem agreeing gas is clearly a great option right now.”
    Oh how true this is. Gas right now is about $3.50/ million BTUs. That gives it the advantage just about anwywhere in North America including Ontario. But will it stay at that price for decades? Not a chance. Just 6-10 years ago the price of gas was north of $8, which made even wind generation superior, and gave a huge advantage to nuclear even in western Canada. So, it comes down to a determination of what is the long term price of gas.

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