M_B_S wrote:The US is more dependent on foreign uranium than it is on foreign oil."
ralfy wrote:Thus, the various means described in this thread to deal with peak oil should have taken place some time ago. One study states that long-term retooling of manufacturing and mechanized agriculture to use less fuel and petrochemicals may take decades, but we don't have that time.
ralfy wrote:Worse, the effects of financial speculation (which leads to more economic instability), the threat of more conflict over remaining resources, and the long-term effects of global warming which will lead to crop destruction and disruption of manufacturing and mining will certainly not make things easier.
Scottie wrote:
"may take decades" and "we don't have don't have that time" are assumptions. Assumptions made without consideration for the extraordinary pressures that peak oil is already inflicting on the global economy and which have already driven per capita energy usage to a plateau some 40 years ago, if your reference to BP information posted elsewhere is correct.
More assumptions of a future which is unknown. Increased water in the atmopshere may or may not lead to crop destruction depending on local conditions rather than global ones, certainly mining hasn't been bothered by climate since the first prospectors brought gold out of Alaska and the Arctic more than a century go and "easier' has never been a consideration for miners, one of the hardiest jobs for the hardiest people out there.
In either case, the poster who referenced where we can get near boundless amounts of uranium for but an increase in cost is on the right path. Uranium supply is simply not an issue of availability in the foreseeable future, but only of cost.
M_B_S wrote::lol: There isnt any problem.....lol
The US is More Dependent on Foreign Uranium Than Foreign Oil"
One of the most critical issues discussed is the severity of the US uranium supply and demand deficit. According to Adnani, "The US is consuming 55 million pounds of uranium per annum...to generate 20% of US electricity...(but) domestic production of uranium is only 4 million pounds per year...The US is more dependent on foreign uranium than it is on foreign oil."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us ... 2012-09-12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfVELhllrg&feature=plc
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The HEU treaty with PUTINs Russia is gone next year so 20% of the US electricity production is @ risk
Only sheeple say: there is no problem there is no problem....
But i am the wolf @ the door .........
M_B_S
What’s powering your home appliances?
For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.
“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war.
M_B_S wrote:Only sheeple say: there is no problem there is no problem....
M_B_S wrote:
Colorado you have a problem....
M_B_S
WNN wrote: 24 March 2011
US uranium enrichment company USEC has signed a multi-year contract with Russia's Techsnabexport (Tenex) for the ten-year supply of low-enriched uranium (LEU). The companies will also consider the construction of an enrichment plant in the USA using Russian technology.
Tenex will start supplying the LEU in 2013 under a contract signed yesterday in Washington, DC, by USEC senior vice president Philip Sewell and Tenex director general Alexey Grigoriev. The amount will be increased up to 2015 when it will reach about one-half the level currently supplied by Tenex to USEC under the Megatons to Megawatts program. The agreement includes the mutual option to increase the quantities up to the same level as that program. Deliveries under the contract are expected to continue until 2022, USEC said.
"Unlike the Megatons to Megawatts program, the quantities supplied under the new contract will come from Russia's commercial enrichment activities rather than the downblending of excess Russian weapons material," USEC said.
The company said that, due to current restrictions on the quantity of enriched uranium that can be imported into the USA from Russia up to 2020, it will "deliver a portion of the enriched uranium to US utilities with most of the enriched uranium to be delivered to USEC's customers outside of the United States in both existing and emerging markets."
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Kazakhstan has announced its plans to cut uranium production by 10% this year due to current low prices in the global market.As part of these plans, the volume of production this year will be cut from 23,800 tonnes (as was in 2016) to 21,800 tonnes.This has already been confirmed by Askar Zhumagaliyev, chairman of Kazatomprom, (the national operator of Kazakhstan for import and export of uranium), according to which, such a decision is mainly due to the slow recovery of the global uranium market from the consequences of the crisis, caused by low demand of uranium, which has been observed in recent years.
The planned cut will be equivalent to 2,000 tonnes, which is approximately 3% of the global production. Despite this, Kazatomprom will remain the world’s leading uranium producer.The decision of Kazatomprom should support global uranium prices, which remain currently low and provide an impetus for their further growth. To date, prices have already increased by 10% up to US$24.24 per pound. In 2016 global prices for uranium fell by 41% to the lowest figures since April, 2005. At the same time another reason of the growth of prices became the recent comments by Donald Trump, which in his tweet said the United States needs to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability in the near future.”
According to some analysts, this may result in the increase of uranium production in the US in the coming years.Kazakhstan has been the world’s leading uranium producer since 2009. Over the past 10 years, the country has increased the volume of its production by almost 6 times, well-ahead its nearest competitors – Canada and Australia. It currently accounts for 40% of global production and hopes to retain its leadership at least until 2025.
Kazakhstan does not have its own nuclear power plants and does not consume the products of the nuclear cycle, however its uranium reserves are the world’s second largest after Australia, being estimated at about 15 percent. According to analysts’ predictions, keeping of the same volumes of production, as at present, will result in their exhaustion by 2046.The decision of Kazatomprom became a surprise for the majority of analysts in the field of uranium and nuclear energy, according to which, this could become a crucial moment for the market, which may result in the recovery of global uranium prices from historical lows, taking into account the cost of uranium production in Kazakhstan is one of the world’s lowest.
At the same time the announced cuts by Kazatomprom and some other uranium majors may eventually lead to a shortage of uranium in the global market, especially due to the plans of India and China to create conditions for the development of the domestic industries of nuclear power in the coming years, that will be reflected through the building of new nuclear reactors.
In 2009, in the comments to this post on The Oil Drum we stumbled upon a mine of information on the operation of the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia. The data table provided numbers for the amount of energy used on site together with the amount of uranium mined. This provided an opportunity to calculate the energy return of the mining operation. Simply put ERoEI = energy contained in the U / the energy used to mine and refine it. There are some complexities but back then I calculated an ERoEI of 1200:1 The data has been updated and fresh calculations are presented below. First a few words about Rossing. The mine is operated by Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining companies. Discovered in 1928, operations began in 1976. According to Wikipedia Rossing is the 5th largest U mine
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
There's Atomic Energy in Granite
THERE’S ATOMIC ENERGY IN GRANITE: CAN WE UNLOCK IT?
Common, ordinary igneous rock contains all the energy that civilization can use. The energy in a single ton of granite is equal to 50 tons of coal. The same rock holds immense quantities of valuable metals.
Consider this: 100 tons of granite, a chunk somewhat larger than an automobile, contains eight tons of aluminum and five tons of iron. Other ingredients include two tons of magnesium, 180 pounds of manganese, 70 pounds of chromium, 40 pounds of nickel, 30 pounds of vanadium, 20 pounds of copper, 10 pounds of tungsten and four pounds of lead.
In 100 tons of average granite there are 14 ounces of uranium and about two pounds of thorium. These radioactive elements are equal in energy to the power obtained from 5000 tons of coal.
Is it possible to unlock this energy from the rock?
It is surprisingly easy. The two elements are concentrated in accessory minerals that make up less than one percent of the weight of the granite. The rock merely needs to be crushed to gain size and leached for a short time in dilute hydrochloric acid. The acid dissolves and retains important percentages of the uranium and thorium. These may than be separated from the acid by a series of straightforward chemical steps.
This simple process extracts only 25% of the radioactive materials but even on this basis, 100 tons of granite yields nuclear fuels that can produce the same energy as is obtained from burning more than 1000 tons of coal.
From the standpoint of energetics it “costs” less than three tons of coal to mine 100 tons of granite and extract its radioactive ingredients. This cost includes the power devoted to quarrying the rock, crushing it, disposal of wastes, transportation, acids, water pumping, shop facilities and other considerations. Thus, by burning three tons of coal one gets a profit, in energy, amounting to 997 or more tons of coal.
In dollars and cents the picture is not as bright. The price of producing uranium from average granite is estimated at around $340 per pound. Uranium can be extracted from richer ores much more cheaply than this.
However, some large bodies of igneous rock contain higher-than-average amounts of uranium and thorium. The price of uranium doesn’t need to climb much above present levels before these bodies can be mined at a profit.
More study needs to be given to recovery methods that would extract possibly 80% of the radioactive materials in granite. Too, it may pay to investigate the recovery of uranium and thorium as by-products in ordinary hard-rock mining and milling operations. Some mine dumps, also, might pay a profit if their pulverized materials were reworked for their radioactive contents.
In any event, there is ample uranium and thorium in the igneous rocks of the earth’s crust to power a highly industrialized civilization for an extremely long time, certainly for thousands of centuries. No nation need be a have-not in atomic energy, for the raw materials are available everywhere.
The role of thorium as a source of atomic energy is relatively new and is still experimental. Thorium is three times as abundant as uranium. In its refined state it is a gray metal resembling platinum in hardness and ductility. It can be extracted form more than 100 different minerals. One source of thorium is the colored glassy monazite particles in granite.
The radioactivity of granite, as a matter of fact, has led to much confusion on the part of week-end prospectors. Prowling the hills with a geiger counter, an amateur prospector is apt to be elated when he gets a high count form a body of granite or decomposed granite. He’s sure he has made a rich strike. Sometimes it is hard to convince him that granite is virtually worthless at present, even though it is a storehouse that we will tap in the future.
Monazite, the chief commercial source of thorium today, is mined as a beach sand on the coasts of India and Brazil. It is also found as a beach sand in Russia and Australia. Smaller quantities of monazite sand occur in the coasts of Florida and Oregon. Other sources of thorium are in the rare earth deposits of Idaho, South Carolina and California.
In the past thorium was used chiefly in the manufacture of mantles for gas lamps of the Welsbach type. Today the Atomic Energy Commission is buying small amounts paying about $4 per pound for a product containing at least 30% thorium oxide. After reducing this to a metal, the AEC offers it for use in experimental reactors at a price of around $19 per pound. Until recently the thorium was refined into metal by an expensive hatch process that required costly reagents. Now a semi continuous process, much less expensive, has been worked out.
Thorium is not readily fissionable. It does not maintain a chain reaction as do U-235 and plutonium. It is a raw material for atomic energy, rather than being an atomic fuel in itself.
When bombarded by neutrons, thorium changes into uranium 233, and U-233 can maintain a chain reaction. This explains the importance of thorium.
Thorium is to be used in experimental “breeder” reactors that are intended to produce power and at the same time to create as much nuclear fuel as they consume. In theory, a breeder can produce as much as 115% of the fuel it burns up, though this may not prove true in practice. Even if a breeder reactor produces almost as much fuel, it still represents a big step in the development of energy.
Such a breeder would have a central core in which U-235 or some other atomic fuel is burned. The thorium will be placed like a blanket around the core so that it captures some of the neutrons that the core emits. The U-233 that is thus created from the thorium in turn will emit more neutrons, transmuting additional thorium. The theory is that a breeder reactor will maintain itself as long as new supplies of thorium are fed to it.
It may be that thorium reactors can operate at higher temperatures than are permissible with other kinds. The resulting increase in efficiency would produce more steam.
This summer a sodium-graphite reactor using enriched U-238 was being completed near Los Angeles by Atomics International, a division of North American Aviation. Heat from the reactor will create steam that will drive a turboelectric generator which in turn will furnish 7500 kilowatts of power to local lines of the Southern California Edison Company.
The thermal efficiency of the reactor is rated at 30%, but if it were the thorium type its efficiency would be around 33%. This seemingly slight increase in efficiency would boost steam temperature from the present 825 degrees to as much as 950 degrees, with an appreciable increase in electrical output.
Important experiments concerned with “thorium breeding” will be conducted in the sodium-graphite reactor at the same time that it is producing commercial power.
Eventually, thorium may become the favored raw material for fueling all large central atomic-power stations. This may not happen for some time, especially in the United States where rather large quantities of the uranium isotope 238 are on hand.
For every pound of fissionable U-235 that is refined, more than 200 pounds of U-238 are automatically obtained. This isotope can be converted into plutonium by bombardment, and plutonium can be used as a nuclear fuel. Too, U-238 that is enriched with U-235 is an acceptable atomic fuel.
Neither of this fuels possesses the breeding characteristics of thorium but from an economic standpoint it may be cheapest to use them. When the AEC released 88.000 pounds of U-235 for power development purposes here and abroad this past spring, it immediately became apparent that we have a vast surplus of useful U-238 on hand. A stockpile of more than 6000 tons of U-238 was obtained when the 88.000 pounds of U-235 were refined.
Another reason why we may be slow in building numerous thorium reactors is that we don’t possess rich deposits of thorium. On the other hand, India is greatly interested in using thorium for power because of the deposits of thorium it possesses.
The usual tendency in any mining operation is to work the richest deposit first. Another tendency is to extract only one or two of the most valuable ingredients from an ore and literally to throw all the rest of the mineral on the dump. Eventually, as our richest mineral resources are used up, it will become standard practice to extract as many as 20 or 30 products from any one mining and milling operation.
In a few unique cases this is being done today. American Potash & Chemical Corporation extracts more than 20 chemicals from the brine that it pumps from alkaline deposits lying under Searles Dry Lake in California. Among other products taken from the brine are table salt, salt cake that is used in fertilizers, soda ash for glass and washing compounds, borax, sodium phosphate, sodium bromide and lithium chloride.
These and other chemicals are removed from the brine in a series of distillation and precipitation steps. Some of these steps are complicated, some are extremely simple. One worth mentioning is the way that Glauber salt is extracted from the brine. This substance precipitates out of solution at 55 degrees or less. At Searles, brine is simply sprayed into the air above the lake bed when the temperature is below 55 degrees. The Glauber salt collects in big piles under the spray heads. The sprays are automatically turned off when the temperature rises above the critical point; otherwise the precipitated material would go back into solution and drain away.
The Searles operation is exceptional because all its minerals are in solution, a situation entirely different than when handling a rocky ore. But it points the way to the metallurgical and chemical tricks that will be devised for extracting numerous ingredients from many kinds of ore.
We know now that even “barren” granite contains a rich variety of metals. And we know that the rock also holds more than enough atomic energy to perform the work of extracting the metals, with energy left over. The time when we will be mining granite may be a long way off, yet it is interesting to speculate on what our resources will be when that time does come.
Suppose that a few centuries from now the United States becomes much more industrialized than it is at present. Suppose, too, that industry in all other parts of the world rises to the same high level. By then, the world population may well have grown to 30 billion persons.
Such a population might consume rock for tis metals and atomic fuels at the rate of 1500 billion tons per year.
Would we soon run out of rock? Hardly. Assuming that all the land areas were available for such processing, man would “eat” his way downward at the rate of less than one tenth inch per year!
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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