Uranium Supply Pt 2

[sch_peakoiler]

NtL technolgy. An interesting thing. Of course only if Dezakin and Tanada are not mistaken about the future of the nuclear

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/09 ... .html#more

[M_B_S]

Peak Oil=Peak Uranium

Wait and see

Uranium production in Canada and Australia is down 30% this year!

see Deutsche Bank / Platts

Namibia down 5,5% so world production is in decline 2006


thats what i think are hard facts or better the reality 2006

M_B_S

[M_B_S]

HARD FACTS and independent !



[web]http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefings/energyfactsheet4.pdf[/web]

[sch_peakoiler]

Peak Oil=Peak Uranium

Wait and see

Uranium production in Canada and Australia is down 30% this year!

see Deutsche Bank / Platts

Namibia down 5,5% so world production is in decline 2006


thats what i think are hard facts or better the reality 2006

M_B_S

The fact that the production from existing mines goes down, does not tell us anything about the peak. Uranium has not been explored for some 30 years now, and no new mines have been built. So this current decline is not relevant. It will become relevant only if it leads to problems in supplies for BIG nuclear consumers.

And may be you try to read arguments brought up against that stormsmith report, which you quote and cite all the time.

[sch_peakoiler]

A question to Dezakin and Tanada

I wanted to ask about the mining logistics of low grade uranium. If we have a mine with the ore grade about 20 ppm, it means we have to mine 1 million tons for every 20 tons of natural uranium, right? Is this not a too complicated logistic endeavor?

[miniTAX]

HARD FACTS and independent !

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/p ... sheet4.pdf

Independant facts from Storm van Leeuwen, a declared enviro .

[sch_peakoiler]

HARD FACTS and independent !

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/p ... sheet4.pdf

Independant facts from Storm van Leeuwen, a declared enviro .

yeah not to mention the fact that this guy has been proven wrong by practical mining. His yield to grade estimate, which is the key factor in his paper, has predicted, that Rossing mine in Namibia consumes more energy (thermal + electrical) than the country Namibia itself. After this he was asked : "Why, are you nuts?". And he was like : "It is your measurements error, my super theoretical prediction, not based on anything, is absolutely correct".
I am not sure this guy knows what he is talking about, either.

[ChumpusRex2]

If we have a mine with the ore grade about 20 ppm, it means we have to mine 1 million tons for every 20 tons of natural uranium, right? Is this not a too complicated logistic endeavor?

The numbers are correct.

To put in in perspective, a large coal plant burns through about 4 or 5 million tons of coal a year.

An equivalent nuke would need about 200 tons of natural uranium - and in the scheme above would need about 10 million tons of ore. A logistical problem, certainly. But the coal plants manage it, and coal is the cheapest of fossil fuels.

Most modern mines have switched to in-situ techniques. Essentially, deep wells are drilled into the ore seams. A water/solvent mixture is injected under pressure and allowed to seep into the ore and percolate through, where it is then recovered through some neighboring wells. The recovered mixture is then chemcially processed to extract the uranium, before being reinjected.

The result is a very low-energy, low-labor method of extracting uranium. No digging, no blasting, no huge trucks and shovels.Even better, no need for grinding and milling of the ore (a significant energy consumer). A mine employing 100 men can mine 1000 tons of uranium per year.


Link

[Tanada]

A question to Dezakin and Tanada

I wanted to ask about the mining logistics of low grade uranium. If we have a mine with the ore grade about 20 ppm, it means we have to mine 1 million tons for every 20 tons of natural uranium, right? Is this not a too complicated logistic endeavor?

If all you are doing is mining the million tons of ore to get the 20 tons of metal then you are making a big investment. However in the real world there is almost always something else of value mixed into that million tons and it can be anything. Most of the time it happens to be gold Other things to consider, 20 tons of Uranium metal contains about 3.5 tons of reactor fuel grade enriched Uranium, enough to power a 1 GWe power plant for 49 days at full power, or 49 GWe days.

How much energy do you expend mining 1 million tons of rock? Well thats a loaded question if there ever was one, for example do you count the explosives used to break up the ore mass for loading? You break it up, load it into big truck, haul it to crushing, crush, leach and discard the tailings, haul the results to an enrichment plant where it is converted, enriched, and converted back into U3O8, sintered, machined, assembled into fuel rods and shipped a third time to the power plant. The bulk of the shipping energy is in hauling the broken ore to the crushing and milling facility which is nearly always at mine mouth or as close to it as possible.

Moving the million tons a mile is expensive, moving the resulting 20 tons around the world is a peice of cake afterwards. Its not really complicated per se, we have been doing it for years with low grade gold ores (as a species, not me personally). Does the abillity to power say any city of 200,000 people for two months make it worth mining a million tons of ore? That is a value judgement everyone would have to answer on their own. How many tons of ore do you have to move to power the same city with Coal which is in effect the only practicle alternative at this time? Well an 'average' 1GWe coal plant consumes about 4 million tons of coal per year. So from a energy from mine to plant point of view for Uranium at 20 ppm you need to mine about 7.5 million tons of ore, move it a mile or so, mill, leach, concentrate, move the resulting 150 tons, convert, enrich, move the resulting 23 tons of enriched fuel, sinter, mill and assemble, move to the power plant. Sounds like a lot of energy used doesn't it? Well for the coal you have to mine about the same 7 million tons because you have to move the rock to get the coal. Then you wash, seperate size and so on at the mine mouth, then you move the remaining 4 million tons of coal cross country to burn it at a power plant. The key question is, does moving the whole 4 million tons of Coal cost more or less than the enrichment, assembly and movement of the energy equivelant 150 tons of natural Uranium?

That is where Van Leewuen makes all of his strange power use assumptions for Uranium, if you beleive him it takes more energy to process and move that 150 tons of Uranium than it is worth. Others, and the laws of physics, disagree.

[EnergySpin]

HARD FACTS and independent !

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/p ... sheet4.pdf

Independant facts from Storm van Leeuwen, a declared enviro .

Benny Hill was a pretty smart dude microTax ... on the other hand VDL is %$#$%$%! (successful attempt at self-censorship).

Thanks for the link though .. it seems that envirocrazies are focusing on the UK. After all they are the largest country that will have to face the "powerswitch" dilemna.
Strange times indeed ... the envirolunatics are using the exact same strategies e.g. "independent consultants" as the big bad multinational wolves so fond of scapegoating.

[sch_peakoiler]

I'm tempted to a rash response, but its sufficient to say that 'pretty fast' is on the order of thousands of years. I've been over this before. Uranium alone is recoverable from phosphates at 20 ppm and above, with 10000 light water reactors gives you about 25000 years or more. With a breeding ratio of 1, that easily stretches into the tens of millions of years.

Phosphates at 20ppm, granite at 5ppm are sources of EROEI<1, therefore they will not be developed as uranium ores for nuclear energy purpose. *IF* FBR works (but I do not see it happening), than just may be.

Where do you take your information about EROEI<1?
I mean the situation is really strange, when some people say we have millions upon millions of tons uranium with EROEI>1, and the others say nope, we only have conventional 3 million tons and thats it. The truth is out there and I wanted at least to get closer to it.

[Tanada]

I'm tempted to a rash response, but its sufficient to say that 'pretty fast' is on the order of thousands of years. I've been over this before. Uranium alone is recoverable from phosphates at 20 ppm and above, with 10000 light water reactors gives you about 25000 years or more. With a breeding ratio of 1, that easily stretches into the tens of millions of years.

Phosphates at 20ppm, granite at 5ppm are sources of EROEI<1, therefore they will not be developed as uranium ores for nuclear energy purpose. *IF* FBR works (but I do not see it happening), than just may be.

Where do you take your information about EROEI<1?
I mean the situation is really strange, when some people say we have millions upon millions of tons uranium with EROEI>1, and the others say nope, we only have conventional 3 million tons and thats it. The truth is out there and I wanted at least to get closer to it.

The fundamental problem with calculations for low grade ores stems from people ignoring the fact that Uranium is usually a byproduct resource in such ores, not the main resource extracted. Phosphate ores are being extracted all the time because they are used for fertilizers. Adding the step to extract the Uranium from the Phosphate concentrate costs some money but the Uranium extracted can be sold at a profit so long as the price is over the extra step cost threshold. The exact same effect is true in South Africa where gold is extracted from low grade ores. The milling tails can be sent through an additional extraction step to recover Uranium, they are already at the crushed, milled and pre treated stage so it costs little to add the Uranium extraction step. If you charge the cost of the whole operation to the Uranium then it won't pay for itself, however if Uranium is just an added step to an existing process it does pay.

Think about this one for a minute Coal ashes are currently hauled off and dumped in landfill type operations. Coal sent to power plants has 1 to 10 ppm Uranium in it, an average around 4 ppm. The Uranium is concentrated into the ash by the burning process. You burn an average 4 million tons of coal per year netting you 4 tons of Uranium in the 600,000 tons of ash remaining after burning. By running that 600,000 tons of ash through the same process you would use at a mine mill extraction plant you can recover those 4 tons of uranium, plus 12 tons of Thorium and a bunch of other trace metals. Nobody does because it just isn't worth the effort, Uranium is still too cheap to make it a paying proposition. Now look at the USA power grid at 60% coal that would be 1200 million tons of coal burned and 1200 tons of Uranium trapped in the ash, already mined and concentrated up tp a point in the coal ash. That is enough uranium to fuel 8 1GWe power plants of the older designs. With FBR it would be enough to power the whole country for a year.

My point is, with hypotheticals and a few peices of knowledge you can support any argument, so long as you ignore all the counter arguments like physical and economic systems, the laws of Physics and so on

Fission can solve our electric grid problem and help with all the others, but you have to choose to use it or that does not matter in the least. It is not the be all and end all of energy for the future, but it is a hell of a lot better than any of the alternatives I have seen offered up.

[sch_peakoiler]

Tanada,

I get your point, thank you for the answer. The question about EROEI did not really imply mining additional metals, because they are not relevant for EROI, they do not return energy. They just make it worse. But anyway, EROI is something one still has to learn to calculate.

The idea of mining so many tons of ore for one LWR plant, implies that we better do not build more of them. You see, otherwise we end up really stripmining the whole earth crust to get those ppms :)

I think the main arguments which nuclear opponents use, is that the factual current development of nuclear does not go along with what we discuss here. Thorium and FBRs are mostly talk, LWRs are being built and little things change. As one of the posters mentioned some pages afore - the most sofisticated technology used now is MOX, and MOX is like 20 years old.
This difference between the assertations "we have unlimited uranium" and official figures of 3 million tons reservs gives nuclear opponents a trump to play.

[pstarr]

HARD FACTS and independent !

http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/p ... sheet4.pdf

Independant facts from Storm van Leeuwen, a declared enviro .

Benny Hill was a pretty smart dude microTax ... on the other hand VDL is %$#$%$%! (successful attempt at self-censorship).

Thanks for the link though .. it seems that envirocrazies are focusing on the UK. After all they are the largest country that will have to face the "powerswitch" dilemna.
Strange times indeed ... the envirolunatics are using the exact same strategies e.g. "independent consultants" as the big bad multinational wolves so fond of scapegoating.

The above is the same EnergySpinMeister who (over several biofuel threads and with an arsenal of fancy algorithmic and mathematical hooey) was willing but unable to dismiss thermodynamics and common sense in his defense of corn-ethanol and then switchgrass-cellulose agriculture scams. He argued over many pages a meanspirited, argumentative, fatuous, and ultimately nonsensical view of industrial process energy return. Finally it became apparent that EnergySpinMeister does not understand the difference between industrial life-cycle energy analysis, and energy efficiency and conversion loss from one form of energy to another. I direct you all to search for these biofuel/eroei debates

I see the same energy-return issue here. It does not matter how wonderful nuclear power is if it takes more energy to access that uranium then is contained in the uranium. I do not care what kind of high-toned or derogatory crap EnergySpinMeister and MiniBrain engage in, commonsense and basic energy law will win out.

I am an active environmentalist living my principals (house is solar powered, I cleaned up a urban brownfield and built a 13-unit cohousing project, degree in organic agriculture, wash plastic bags, etc). I am also a scientist and have to give nuclear power a chance, given the miserable prognosis for a petroleum-fueled future

However it has just become clear to me which side I will probably end up. I have a feeling that Storm van Leeuwen’s energy return analysis is probably the critical piece of this policy puzzle here. Why build up the nuclear infrastructure when the resource is so limited. A combination of transition nuclear to solar power may be the way to go. But again, given EnergySpinMeisters rabid defense I will probably rue the day I even considered that.

[EnergyUnlimited]

The above is the same EnergySpinMeister who (over several biofuel threads and with an arsenal of fancy algorithmic and mathematical hooey) was willing but unable to dismiss thermodynamics and common sense in his defense of corn-ethanol and then switchgrass-cellulose agriculture scams. He argued over many pages a meanspirited, argumentative, fatuous, and ultimately nonsensical view of industrial process energy return. Finally it became apparent that EnergySpinMeister does not understand the difference between industrial life-cycle energy analysis, and energy efficiency and conversion loss from one form of energy to another. I direct you all to search for these biofuel/eroei debates

I see the same energy-return issue here.

If you can see this, than we have an evidence, that you are shortsighted.

It does not matter how wonderful nuclear power is if it takes more energy to access that uranium then is contained in the uranium. I do not care what kind of high-toned or derogatory crap EnergySpinMeister and MiniBrain engage in, commonsense and basic energy law will win out.

Neither you understand thermodynamics well...
However basic energy law is winning out and hence we have viable nuclear power, even if green Ludites are very upset with it.

[pstarr]

so if uranium energy is used up mining uranium you would still mine it?

[EnergyUnlimited]

so if uranium energy is used up mining uranium you would still mine it?

There is enough of energy in uranium to mine "replacement", deal with waste and to provide some excess into grid.

[pstarr]

so if uranium energy is used up mining uranium you would still mine it?

There is enough of energy in uranium to mine "replacement", deal with waste and to provide some excess into grid.

what replacement? and how do we know there is enough energy to deal with waste? we haven't done it yet, have we?

[EnergyUnlimited]

so if uranium energy is used up mining uranium you would still mine it?

There is enough of energy in uranium to mine "replacement", deal with waste and to provide some excess into grid.

what replacement? and how do we know there is enough energy to deal with waste? we haven't done it yet, have we?

Replacement means additional mined uranium to replace spent fuel.
You can also mine thorium, which is capable to give ca 100 times more energy, than uranium can (I assume here that FBR had failed, but this is still an open question).

The best approach in dealing with waste is to reprocess it to recover uranium, plutonium and other actinides.
Remainig waste is not such a great problem anymore and all, what you have to do is to burry it in suitable depository area, fingers cross and hope for the best. One or two thousands years and it is gone (with exception of technetium perhaps, but this one is of low radiotoxicity only).
However if you neglect reprocessing, than you are in bigger trouble.
Pu 239 has 24000 years half life and here your trouble begins.

[sch_peakoiler]

pstarr,

it is a very interesting question about the EROI of Uranium mining. Stormsmith report (this is a "codename" for that Van Whatever - sorry cannot memorize the spelling of the name - report) - says that Ores of certain grade have EROI less than 1. Certain grade in this case means under 0.05%, which is about the lowest mark of the grade we mine today. So in Stormsmith's opinion - what we have now explored - are the last tons of uranium we can mine EROI positive.

I am very interested in this subject, because this is the area where opinions of proponents differ from the opinions of the opponents in tens(sic!!!!!) orders of magnitude (sic!!!!!!). Compared to this, other discussions have a 100% consent and agreement!!!!
Opponents say - 40 years supply, current consumption.
Proponents say - billions of years of supply, current consumption.

This means, something is fishy:)

I analyzed Stormsmith's report myself, apart from reading the official rebuttals, and their answer, AND the rebuttal of the answer.

I came to a conclusion that the whole report is built on a specific yield to ore grade function, which was extrapolated from theory. There were no practical data at the moment of writing the report for low quality ores. So Stormsmith report forecasts the yield to behave in a specific way, and thus gets its results.
Should the yield to grade function be proven wrong, the whole report will be proven wrong, disregarding the energy input they estimate for mining and milling.

Their formula looks roughly like this. E is energy consumption

E = Emine/yield(grade) + Emill + Eenrich;

It simple maths than shows us that the last two components are constant and do not play a substantial role. Yield (grade) is, on the other hand, important.

Practical data, obtained after the report was published, showed that this estimated yield (grade) function made a wrong prediction for a Namibia Rossing mine. So far it was the only example, as not so many mines have been explored with a rather low ore quality.

So far, Stormsmith was only wrong. As we see more mines coming online we will see of course more evidence for either part, so just we wait:):)

pstarr,
What is your opinion about the possible EROI of uranium?