Uranium has recently (past few decades) been really cheap. There is absolutely no reason to open new mines if they won't make money. Now that the price has risen, lots of new mines are in the process of opening.
And how much waste water is left to cool in the pipes. Say 6m of hot water is 2l or so, which may be wasted.
Not by people who care.
Mary
Define "wasted". Unless that 6m of water pipe is outside it cools yes but at the same time raises the interior temperature of the house thus it requires less heating. And yes out CH is still kicking in first thing and late evening, summer? What summer?
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:35:56 -0500 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@mauve.plus.com (Ian Stirling) wrote this:-
Chapter 3. In particular see the "Can uranium production increase to fill the gap?" section at the bottom.
"Uranium supply
"So ? how much uranium ore with a positive PREI do we have left? The 'Red Book' is the most authoritative source on the quantity and quality of the remaining uranium ore, and of future prospects for production. It is prepared by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the 2005 edition was published in June 2006. In its discussion of the availability of usable uranium ore, it suggests that there is
70 years' supply at the current price. It adds, however, that, when 'prognosticated and speculative' resources are added in, there is enough to maintain current output for a further 270 years."Storm van Leeuwen and Smith acknowledge that there is more uranium ore to be discovered, and that there are massive quantities of uranium in the ground, but argue that the quality of the ore remaining after 60 years of further extraction is likely to be too poor to yield a positive TREI.
"We have, then, two rather similar estimates ? 70 years and 60 years ? but one of them then adds prognosticated and speculative reserves to give us 270 years supply at current rates; the other sees no evidence that the prognosticated and speculative reserves would in fact give us a positive TREI. Does this leave us in total confusion as to which to believe? Not quite. As we know, from experience of the parallel case of peak oil, the official agencies ? in the case of oil, the United States Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency ? have a strong and now widely acknowledged tendency for massive bias towards exaggerating future prospects. Prognosticated and speculative reserves, if they exist, will be deep below the surface, requiring very large investments of time, capital and energy before they can be exploited. Those speculative resources ? which the NEA hopes will one day becomes usable reserves ? will need to be remarkably rich, relative to the vast deposits of very low-grade and useless ore of which we are already aware. That is, we know enough to err on the safe side and stick to the demonstrable 60-70 year estimate of remaining ore with a positive TREI, on which the NEA and Storm van Leeuwen and Smith are agreed...
"... and yet, let us look again at what that 60/70-year estimate really means. Both the NEA and the Storm van Leeuwen and Smith estimates contain assumptions which tend to exaggerate the time remaining before depletion. First, both estimates are 'reserves-to-production ratios' ? current reserves simply divided by current annual production, which gives the misleading impression that production can continue at a constant rate before coming to an abrupt stop. In fact, it is well understood that, after reaching a peak well before the artificial cut-off point given by the reserves-to-production ratio, production of a resource in its latter years takes its time to decline towards zero; it is in the years closely following the peak that the trouble starts, not in the year when production finally comes to a stop.
"Secondly, the growth in demand for uranium which the nuclear industry seems to expect would, in any case, foreshorten the whole sequence: if 70 years is a relevant guideline for the creation of reserves if usage remains constant, a likely cut-off point on the assumption of increasing demand is probably closer to 35 years.
"Thirdly, both estimates are of the TREI limits, not the much earlier turning-point to negative PREI. These three factors bring forward the period during which deep deficits in uranium supply can be expected, to the decade 2011-2020.
"Supply crunch
"And, indeed, there is a widely-shared recognition that there will be a severe shortage of uranium around 2013. This is frankly acknowledged by the NEA itself, and set in context by the First Uranium Corporation." [big snip]
"Can uranium production increase to fill the gap?
"Although several of the medium-sized producers have in recent years roughly maintained their output, or slightly increased it ? notably Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger and Russia ? the world?s two largest producers ? Canada and Australia ? both show some evidence of being in recent decline, with uranium production falling by (respectively), 15 and 20 percent in 2005-2006.
"In both cases, hopes for expanding production have been pinned on major new projects ? the new Cigar Lake mine in Canada, and the expansion of Olympic Dam in Australia. Cigar Lake is designed to produce nearly 7,000 tonnes per annum, and it was due to start in
2007. However, in October 2006, it flooded; the probable way of containing the water in the sandstone above the workings is by refrigeration, which will require large inputs of energy even before work can begin. It is now uncertain whether, even after long past and future delays, Cigar Lake will ever be a substantial source of uranium."The contribution of Olympic Dam is in some ways even more dubious. At present, it is an underground mine well past its maturity, and the management, BHP Billiton, is considering whether to move to an adjacent ore body with an open pit mine on a massive scale. The new mine would be three kilometres in diameter and one kilometre deep, with some 350 metres of rock overburden to be removed in order to get at the ore. The problem is that the uranium ore is very low-grade ? only 0.06 percent and less, with an average of 0.029 percent, so that it would be uneconomic in money terms if it were not for the copper, gold and silver which the rock also contains. But that itself is a mixed blessing because it means that the copper is contaminated with small quantities of uranium, which has to be removed in a smelter constructed in the Australian desert, adding even greater energy-costs to the final energy yield.
"Doubts as to whether Olympic Dam is capable of yielding uranium with a positive energy balance are increased by a recent study by Storm van Leeuwen, who suggests that the energy return on the energy invested in the mine is only marginally better than that of gas. Moreover, the removal of 350 metres of overburden, followed by the milling of low-grade ore would require Australia to import diesel oil with an energy content not far short of the final energy-yield of the uranium it would produce. High oil prices, aggravated by actual outages in oil supplies as the effects of the oil peak mature, would cause problems for a project for which a large and reliable flow of diesel would have to be guaranteed.
"Moreover, the mine is in an area of extreme drought: even if it does supply its own water by desalinating seawater, it is possible that the needs of agriculture will have a prior claim on South Australia?s water resources.
"The BHP Billiton board has not yet made the final decision whether to go ahead, but the independent nuclear energy analyst John Busby concludes that it is 'unlikely', and that, even if it did, uranium production would 'certainly' be closer to 5,000 tonnes per annum than to the 15,000 tonnes which was originally planned.
"On this evidence is seems probable that, far from expanding in order to sustain the flow of energy following the oil peak, the nuclear industry will indeed begin to falter during the decade
2010-2019, with some nuclear reactors being closed down for lack of fuel, and some of the reactors now in the planning stage and under construction remaining unused indefinitely."In the light of this, a judgment has to be made as to whether hopes of a revival of uranium supply are a sufficiently realistic foundation on which to base expectations that the nuclear industry has a long term future as a major energy provider. Even the NEA hedges its bets about this. Readers are invited to read the following two sentences from the Executive Summary with care and to decide for themselves whether they are reassured that the uranium needed to fuel the industry?s recovery after the coming shortfall will in fact be available:
"The long lead-times needed to bring resources into production continues to underscore the importance of making timely decisions to increase production capability well in advance of any supply shortfall. Improved information on the nature and extent of world uranium inventories and other secondary sources would improve the accuracy of the forecasting required to make these timely production decisions.
"And this brings us to the critical question of whether there will be enough uranium to provide the energy to clear up the nuclear industry?s own accumulated waste."
David's notes
Cameco say production at Cigar Lake will start in 2010. Time will tell.
BHP Billiton say they are undertaking a two year prefeasibility study into the expansion of Olympic Dam. Thus they are a very long way from actually producing anything from any expansion.
We haven't needed to use our boiler to produce hot water since February - and then infrequently. The CH hasn't been needed either.
The cylinder is full of water at 55.5C right now - heated by the sun. That's a little above average for the last few weeks but not much. On occasions it's been 75C.
That suggests that we've had summer sun.
Mary
You're going to leave it running then? :)
Was your solar water heating fitted professionally or DIY? I am looking into it myself!
Steve
I was in B&Q this evening and they had blister packs containing TWO
150W 'long' lamps for 25p in their 'to clear' area :-)
I'm going to quote a different bit:
"David Fleming has an MA (History) from Oxford, an MBA from Cranfield and an MSc and PhD (Economics) from Birkbeck College, University of London."
A respected physicist then.
"He ... is a former Chairman of the Soil Association."
And independent of any groups involved in the debate.
"The half-life of uranium-238, one of the largest constituents of the waste, is about the same as the age of the earth: 4.5 billion years"
Ah. That explains a lot. He is discounting fast breeder reactors (which use up the U238 to make Pu239, of which he says "plutonium-239 shares with uranium-235 the property that it, too, splits when struck by neutrons, so that it begins to act as a fuel as well."
Hmm. I wonder if there will be enough coal and oil left to clean up their industry's accumulated waste - CO2? A lot of people forget that.
I don't think fission is the best solution, but as successive government worldwide haven't spent the money to sort out fusion it may be the best we have. I certainly don't want us to drop back to a pre-industrial civilisation.
Andy
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:37:24 +0100 someone who may be Andy Champ wrote this:-
Glad to see that you were unable or unwilling to challenge the work.
Had Mr Fleming produced the work on his own then you may have a point. However, he did not as it states in the acknowledgements section.
It was a manufactured product installed by Spouse and a son. I can send you pictures if you mail me.
Mary
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:22:52 +0100 someone who may be "Mr Sandman" wrote this:-
The Solartwin is essentially one unit, with minimal assembly of the panel necessary (generally just putting the PV panel on). Get it on the roof and do minimal work to the pipes and it is working.
A alternative is to buy the bits and spend rather longer assembling them. has a range of bits.
Your choice. The Solartwin is quicker to do but the Navitron has more play value.
Yebbut we were doing it in the beginning of January :-)
Speed was desirable - and it was working immediately - warm (over 30C) water the next day :-)
Mary
>On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:39:10 +0100 someone who may be "Mary Fisher" wrote this:-
I note that you let Spouse and a son work on the roof in January:-)
Incidentally one of the advantages of buying bits is that they are easier to get onto the building. Rather than getting a whole panel up in one go one can do it in stages. Best to check it all fits on the ground first though:-)
That is one of the advantages of the Solartwin. I'm sure this advantage is particularly welcomed by "DIY widows", who often seethe at the length of time some jobs take.
It is however in this case totally correct. Ther is enough extrcatable uranium in seawater to keep the whole world in nuclear electricity, given use of thorium and fast breeders, for a thousand years or so minium. What isn't in the picture is the scale of the plant needed to extract it.
whilst not on the sort of silly numbers that windmills produce, its still pretty damned big.
We probably have around 50 years of total UK energy production stockpiled in weapons and weapons grade and reprocessable waste.
Total bollocks. They did work at producing what they were designed for. Weapons grade material.
They weren't designed to produce power, and they largely didn;t.
There's a shit load in the gold tailings in South africa, for example.
Never worth extracting.
"let"? I couldn't have stopped them ... but it was clear and dry - no problem.
The list of things for mine to do seems just to keep growing - as I find more and more tasks ... :-)
A neighbour and old friend wants Spouse to put a Solartwin on his roof and pay him the difference between the pro and diy installation. We've decided he hasn't the time. Money isn't important enough, we have a lot to do before our holiday and the friend certainly couldn't get up a ladder or scaffolding to help.
Mary
On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:57:48 +0100 someone who may be The Natural Philosopher wrote this:-
Ah, proof by assertion again.
Excellent, rudeness. Do keep it up.
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