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Interestingly, when they were doing repairs on this thing they discovered someone had dropped a French baguette down into the machine's bowels. I had to laugh at that, wouldn't it have been something if we all died in a black hole because some frenchie dropped his lunch.

Also, one scientist is theorizing that when they create the god particle thing, what will happen is the same particle from the future will go back in time and smash into the particle here in the present.

I'm looking forward to CERNs progress here. Please keep us posted Carlhole.

im looking forward to our money disappearing into a black hole

Tanada,
I do not see much room for advancement in power generation by burning of FF or by conventional nuclear technology.

These are all based on boiling water to produce steam and run turbines and heat exchanger or turbine designs are already about as good as they can be.

Thorium? Anyone? Can we please start at least thinking about switching...


CANDU?

What about ripping apart some more nuclear weapons? Like we need more then a few anyways...

EnergyUnlimited wrote:Tanada,
I do not see much room for advancement in power generation by burning of FF or by conventional nuclear technology.

These are all based on boiling water to produce steam and run turbines and heat exchanger or turbine designs are already about as good as they can be.

I am not talking about boiling water and using steam turbines, I am talking about fuel consumption in modern reactors with very high conversion ratio's approaching unity. We now have the technology to produce as much fuel as we consume, with either Thorium/U-233 cycle or Uranium/Pu-239-241 cycle. Therefor there IS no Uranium shortage, at least not for the modern reactors now being built or planned to be built.

Tanada wrote:

EnergyUnlimited wrote:Tanada,
I do not see much room for advancement in power generation by burning of FF or by conventional nuclear technology.

These are all based on boiling water to produce steam and run turbines and heat exchanger or turbine designs are already about as good as they can be.

I am not talking about boiling water and using steam turbines, I am talking about fuel consumption in modern reactors with very high conversion ratio's approaching unity. We now have the technology to produce as much fuel as we consume, with either Thorium/U-233 cycle or Uranium/Pu-239-241 cycle. Therefor there IS no Uranium shortage, at least not for the modern reactors now being built or planned to be built.

Link S.v.p.?

Carlhole wrote:Who here actually believes experiments like NIF, Cern, ITER, etc. won't lead to important basic discoveries?

Nah, they waste their time on frivolous crackpot inventions like the WWW.

frankthetank wrote:Thorium? Anyone? Can we please start at least thinking about switching...

India is working on it, although not the same technology that the thorium blogger guy supports.

dukey wrote:im looking forward to our money disappearing into a black hole

well played, sir.

hardtootell-2 wrote:Link S.v.p.?

LWBR
RMWR one
RMWR two

Those three links should give you a basic understanding that we have had the technology for thirty or more years to build fission reactors that produce as much or more fissionable material as they consume within the framework of a light water reactor, the most common type. If you are willing to do away with the water as a coolant you can get some pretty substantial breeding ratio's with fast neutron reactors cooled with gas like CO2 or Helium, and those cooled with metals like Sodium, Potassium, Bismuth and Lead, or even those which do away with separate core and coolant systems like the Molten Salt breeder reactors.

'Big Bang Machine' Smashes World Record

Physicists measure the energy of the hair's-width beams, not their speed, because the protons are already traveling close to the speed of light and cannot go much faster.

One proton at 1 TeV is about the energy of the motion of a flying mosquito. When a beam is fully packed with 300,000 billion protons with 7 TeV energy – the goal of the LHC – it is like an aircraft carrier traveling at 20 knots. That is why the scientists are carefully learning how to run it and make sure all protection systems are working, said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The power level reached Monday isn't significantly higher than Fermilab's. More significant advances are expected during the first half of next year when the LHC plans to raise each beam to 3.5 TeV in preparation for experiments create conditions like those 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang.

Physicists hope that will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry and, ultimately, the creation of the universe billions of years ago.

Why would you NOT want to be curious about these things?

That seems to be the prevailing belief system around here: That "there is nothing really important left to discover, so NIF, CERN, ITER... That's all a waste of time".

To me, the speculation that there WILL NOT be any new discoveries from these machines and facilities is a totally WILD speculation. It's much easier to believe that some fundamental discoveries will be made that yield new sciences, technology and applications.

Those who keep talking about Thorium really should review this thread, the two metals are intimately linked due to both being fertile nuclear fission fuel.

They're also intimately related because of similar chemistry making them both lithophilic minerals nearly ubiquitously concentrated at log normal distribution in the earth's crust.

Nuclear power is generated using Uranium. Uranium is a metal mined in various parts of the world. Nuclear power stations work in pretty much the same way as fossil fuel-burning stations, except that a "chain reaction" inside a nuclear reactor makes the heat instead. Uranium is important metals for nuclear power.

Kazakhstan’s international energy image is now that of one of the world’s rising oil exporters, an extraordinary feat given that, two decades ago its hydrocarbon output was beyond insignificant when the USSR collapsed. The vast Central Asian nation, larger than Western Europe, has now quietly passed another energy milestone.

Kazakhstan produces 33 percent of world’s mined uranium, followed by Canada at 18 percent and Australia, with 11 percent of global output. Kazakhstan contains the world's second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. Until two years ago Kazakhstan was the world's No. 3 uranium miner, following Australia and Canada.

Together the trio is responsible for about 62 percent of the world's production of mined uranium.

According to Kazakhstan’s State Corporation for Atomic Energy, Kazatomprom, during January-September, the country mined 13,957 tons of uranium. “The volume of uranium mining in the Republic of Kazakhstan (for January - September) comprised 13,957 tons, which is 11 percent higher than the same period last year." Even more impressive, Kazatomprom’s revenues soared 72 percent year-on-year. Kazatomprom is the state-owned Kazakh national operator for the export of uranium, as well as rare metals, nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants, special equipment, technologies, and dual-purpose materials.

To put Kazakhstan’s accomplishment in context, a mere five years ago Kazakhstan produced 5,279 tons of uranium.

While the March disaster at Japan’s Fuskuhima nuclear complex has caused several European nations to reassess their commitment to nuclear power, Kazakhstan’s regional markets seem assured in Asia’s rising economic powerhouses China and India. While Beijing has reacted to Fukushima by ordering thorough inspections of the nation’s nuclear power plants, China's Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense in its 11th Five-Year Plan for the Nuclear Industry announced China intended to produce 40 gigawatts of nuclear power electrical generating capacity within a decade, even though nuclear power currently accounts for just 1.4 percent of China’s electrical power generation.

If China follows through with its ambitious nuclear power plant construction plans the country will need an estimated 44 million pounds of uranium annually, as by 2020 the country will have a total of 77 planned and proposed new reactors. Of China's 11 current nuclear power plants, the oldest, Qingshan-1, only came online in 1991.

India’s nuclear ambitions parallel China’s. While nuclear power currently accounts for only 3-4 percent of the country’s electrical output, India has 19 planned and proposed nuclear power reactors on the drawing board.

But the specter of the Japanese nuclear crisis has even overshadowed Astana’s optimism.

Speaking at the Minex conference in Astana on 5-7April, Kazatomprom president Vladimir Shkol’nik stated that the Fukushima debacle would not greatly influence the Kazakh state atomic company’s plans.

Despite Shkol’nik’s optimism, immediately after the Fukushima disaster the world uranium spot price plummeted from over $70 per pound to just $49 per pound, but Full article at: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gener ... Miner.html

Uranium spot price for end of February was $51.75. Does anyone still have doubts about the abundant supply of Uranium currently available to buyers?

Australia has as Tanada says, the capacity to produce a vast amount more Uranium than it currently does. The companies supposedly keeping prices high have in fact been struggling to get through the application stages, particularly when it comes to Environmental Impact Statements.
The preferred method of extraction for the largest reserves is sub-terranian liquefaction (equivalent to fracking). The areas on top of most of the Uranium reserves are catchments for the underlying Great Artesian Basin, and the whole lot is porous limestone underlay. Meaning there is no way to safely, surely isolate the process from the aquifer. Then there is another fact, that most of this area is thinly populated by mostly full blood aboriginal people and pastoralists. The politics get very messy outback. Multi-billion dollar Uranium projects have been 'stood aside' pending more favorable EIS outcomes. It is nothing unusual for ten years of legalism and bargaining to go on before a site goes beyond test drilling, for any mineral. Probably double that for Uranium at current pace (effectively stalled completely).
(Edit to add: for more info/ example/ google : Angela Pamela Uranium mine)

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9419#more


adding the numbers :



Figure 1. World nuclear electric production split by major producing countries, based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy. FSU is Former Soviet Union.




Figure 6. World Uranium Production, based on data of the World Nuclear Association.
The market that we now find ourselves in is like no other in the history of uranium. Production is far below requirements, which are growing. HEU [highly enriched uranium] supplies and the enrichment of tails material make up a large portion of supply, but the fate of these supply sources is uncertain. Supply has become more concentrated, making the market more vulnerable to disruptions if there are any problems with a particular supply source. Another source of market vulnerability is the relatively low level of inventory held by buyers and sellers alike.

The consulting firm ends the section with a pitch for its $5,000 report on the situation.

A person would like to think that additional production will be ramped up quickly, or that the US military would find some inventory. Markets don’t always work well at incentivizing a need for future production, especially when more or less adequate current supplies are available when Russian recycled bomb material is included. The discontinuity comes when those extra supplies disappear.

This post originally appeared on Our Finite World.
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Peak Oil = Peak Uranium!

M_B_S

Spot price is down to $47.00 and still no shortage in sight.