Uranium: Unsustainable Solution To Climate Crisis
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04.10.07
Sometime ago... a mouse hair's breadth on the scale of climate history... we posted on the topic of whether nuclear power was a sustainable solution to the climate crisis. Short answer: no...not for the centuries it must suffice. Most recognize that building or upgrading nuclear generators is a hugely expensive proposition [think on how many wind farms could be built for the money]. Many know that it takes 10+ years to design, site, and build a nuclear generation plant, and that liability insurance is only affordable if the government underwrites it (unlike any renewable source of electricity). There's always the elephant-in-the-closet issue of rad-waste management. Hold that mayhem, though, because we think plans for using nuclear power to meet the climate challenge will be tested more strongly by other matters. One key vulnerability is cooling water consumption, which would put nuclear power on a collision course with the realities of Roasted World.
Assuming nuclear power is to be officiously expanded to replace and add to carbon intensive electricity sources, we'll need very large new supplies of uranium, from friendly suppliers. As discussed in our earlier post, uranium ore mining and the several processing steps to enrich uranium for fuel rod manufacture are quite energy intensive and messy steps: creating substantial carbon dioxide burdens that must be added to the debit side of the climate mitigation equation. That's a given regardless of who's fueling the reactors. But, the most critical issue now before policy makers may be the size of world uranium reserves. A recent study by MIT focuses on this subject; and; the reserves are not looking very sustainable. "Limited supplies of uranium fuel for nuclear power plants may thwart the renewed and growing interest in nuclear energy in the United States and other nations, according to an industry expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." On the other planet, the sustainable nuclear reality one, there is this headline: "Industry's global 'renaissance' is real, energy analysts say." Which is backed up by this statement, from the world nuclear association (WNA). Image credit: Photographyjam, Australian uranium mine tailings. Looking like chocolate covered sperm, the uranium pit mines ask swimmingly, "which planet do we really live on?"
Uranium is a rare and finite natural resource. Its use is intrinsically unsustainable, before looking at all the rest of its problems - which are legion.
The only way out of this dilemma is to build breeder reactors - as France has done. Breeders are tailored to generate a large amount of plutonium which can be used in specialized reactors to generate electricity and more plutonium.
This creates a host of additional problems. Plutonium is a prime, rare atom bomb component. Thiink of the main ingredient in the Nagasaki bomb. More plutonium in more places under civillian control (or even expanded military administration) means more opportunity for theft and disaster.
A softball size chunk of plutonium is all that is needed to make a nuclear explosion. Inhaled, plutonium is the most carcinogenic material known - an invisible speck is more than enough to give youterminal lung cancer.
Plutonium from reactors has to be reprocessed before being reused, so there's another link in the chain and more opportunity for errors, as well as significant process energy inputs.
Breeder reactors have more potential for meltdowns, or even for nuclear explosion. One of the few benefits of US light water reactors is their unsuitability for nuclear explosions.
Lastly, plutonium is the champ of radioactive waste. It has a half-life of 100,000 years, which means that it must be safeguarded for a million years before it fully decays to background radiation levels.
This post does excellent service in mentioning some of the many limitations to the expansion of nuclear power. But there are more.
If there's an earthquake, your wind turbine towers may fall over and kill some people. If an earthquake causes a breach in a nuclear power plant a region may need to be evacuated for hundreds of years and thousands of people can die or suffer horrible illnesses.
Renewable energy production is inherently distributed, low-er tech, scalable, more readily available to the individual, and more resilient during disasters.
The idea that mineral resources are rare is a fallacy. Once we colonize the solar system we'll have huge resources available to us. There's enough material in the solar system to support 100 trillion humans. The asteroid belt contains more heavy elements than the earth's crust, and harvesting it won't pollute our biosphere.
That being said, it's illogical to use nuclear power within the orbit of the Earth and on the Earth itself. We've got so much energy that's not being harnessed that to start converting atoms to energy is wasteful. We need nuclear power on Mars and further out because the sunlight is weak and the distributed nature of renewable energy makes it unfeasible. But to use it on Earth is to ignore all the energy we have around us.
While there are real and serious problems with uranium based nuclear power in the near term we have few options unless we want to keep burning coal.
We need to pursue renewable sources of power and reduce demand. But those measures alone will not slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Uranium based nuclear power can be a bridge technology to a completely sustainable power base.
We should also be looking at other nuclear fuels, such as thorium. Uranium seems to be the fuel of choice only because its use was derived from Cold War era bomb making. There are other fuels that are more plentiful that can be used without increasing the threat of arms proliferation.
There is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US because there is a simple mature technology available that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to 'concentrating solar power' (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985
and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source.
CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.CSP works best in hot deserts and it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient 'HVDC' transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US.
A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US "could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or about seven times the current total US electric capacity".
In the 'TRANS-CSP' report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at www.trec-uk.org.uk and www.trecers.net .
Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .