What if there are no "bundles of free money from Uncle Sam" for developers of new nuclear power plants, and they go ahead ahead anyway?

Nuclear power skeptics occasionally refer to the IAEA "Red Book" uranium reserve estimate in 2003 of about three million tonnes. They are less likely to follow the example of Martin Sevior and look at the same authority's report two years later:

As of the beginning of 2003 World Uranium reserves were:

* Reasonable Assured Reserves recoverable at less than /kgU (or /lb U3O8) = 3.10 - 3.28 million tonnes.

* Additional reserves recoverable at less than /kgU (or /lb U3O8) = 10.690 million tonnes.

As of the beginning of 2005 World Uranium reserves were:

* Reasonable Assured Reserves recoverable at less than /kgU (or /lb U3O8) = 4.7 million tonnes.

* Additional recoverable Uranium is estimated to be 35 million tonnes

The substantial increase (almost 50%) from 2003 shows the results of the world-wide renewed exploration effort ...

The recent $85-a-pound price translates into $220/kg, significantly higher than the price at which 10 million tonnes was known to be on hand in 2003, so prospectors have been finding the stuff at a much greater rate than the world's reactors have been burning it. No-one really expects this to change until the price goes way down again. It's already fallen about a third from its peak earlier this year.

And what is the connection to the supposed billions in freebies? Well, to produce a billion watts of electricity by burning natural gas, one must now-a-days pay a gas bill near $0.4 billion a year. This includes substantial royalties for government. The uranium bill for a billion watts from nuclear plants like the Darlington one near me is $0.036 billion a year.

That's a lot less than $0.4 billion; it is less than a tenth. So if those investors build tens of gigawatts, tens of billions of watts, of new nuclear plants, they'll be depriving government of billions of natural gas dollars each year.

If there were no "billions in freebies" --

(Actually, loan guarantees, worth much less than the billions they cover, just as mortgage insurance for a housebuyer costs much less than the house)

- then regulators would be in a conflict of interest. They could protect billions a year in future income for themselves and other public servants by betraying the public: red-taping the new nuclear plants to death, and cranking up the pipelines that carry gas to plants that burn it,  money to regulators, and, occasionally, death to citizens.

But with the loan guarantees, they lose billions either way, and if they let the nuclear plants go ahead, they, personally, will know that those nukes are a comforting presence over their back fence, rather than a gas pipeline or a railway line carrying coal.

Government loses either way, but with the loan guarantees, its supposed bosses,the People, win.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron internal combustion car fan
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

Nice to hear that the company that wants to build the US' first nuke in ages has no experience. But that cavalier attitude is rampant in the industry, so they'll be right at home.

Speaking of cavalier, the NRC just allowed the nearby and rapidly aging Vermont Yankee reactor to continue operating long after the plant was due to shut down, and above the capacity it was built for. It has had several safety concerns lately including a collapse of its "cooling towers" which are made of wood. Wood!? What century was this thing built in?

But true to the nature of this industry, the plant's operator said all that is routine. No worries. Go home and turn on the lights...luckily the grassroots efforts of New England Coalition are watchdogging these guys. Someone's got to. http://www.newenglandcoalition.org

The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

Nuclear lobby was demanding more loan guarantee coverage than the entire rest of the US energy industry combined.  $50 Billion all told.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/30/222447/681

These facts come from a 1983 article by Prof Bernard Cohen.

Nuclear energy, assuming breeder reactors, will last for several billion years, i.e. as long as the sun is in a state to support life on earth.

Here are the basic facts.

   1. In 1983, uranium cost $40 per pound. The known uranium reserves at that price would suffice for light water reactors for a few tens of years. Since then more rich uranium deposits have been discovered including a very big one in Canada. At $40 per pound, uranium contributes about 0.2 cents per kwh to the cost of electricity. (Electricity retails between 5 cents and 10 cents per kwh in the U.S.)

   2. Breeder reactors use uranium more than 100 times as efficiently as the current light water reactors. Hence much more expensive uranium can be used. At $1,000 per pound, uranium would contribute only 0.03 cents per kwh, i.e. less than one percent of the cost of electricity. At that price, the fuel cost would correspond to gasoline priced at half a cent per gallon.

   3. How much uranium is available at $1,000 per pound?

      There is plenty in the Conway granites of New England and in shales in Tennessee, but Cohen decided to concentrate on uranium extracted from seawater - presumably in order to keep the calculations simple and certain. Cohen (see the references in his article) considers it certain that uranium can be extracted from seawater at less than $1000 per pound and considers $200-400 per pound the best estimate.

      In terms of fuel cost per million BTU, he gives (uranium at $400 per pound 1.1 cents , coal $1.25, OPEC oil $5.70, natural gas $3-4.)

   4. How much uranium is there in seawater?

      Seawater contains 3.3x10^(-9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium. All the world's electricity usage, 650GWe could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for 7 million years.

   5. However, rivers bring more uranium into the sea all the time, in fact 3.2x10^4 tonne per year.

   6. Cohen calculates that we could take 16,000 tonne per year of uranium from seawater, which would supply 25 times the world's present electricity usage and twice the world's present total energy consumption. He argues that given the geological cycles of erosion, subduction and uplift, the supply would last for 5 billion years with a withdrawal rate of 6,500 tonne per year. The crust contains 6.5x10^13 tonne of uranium.
   7. He comments that lasting 5 billion years, i.e. longer than the sun will support life on earth, should cause uranium to be considered a renewable resource.
   8. Here's a Japanese site discussing extracting uranium from seawater.

Comments:

    * Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his postulated 5 billion years.
    * He didn't mention thorium, also usable in breeders. There is 4 times as much in the earth's crust as there is uranium. There's less thorium in seawater than there is uranium.
    * He did mention fusion, but remarks that it hasn't been developed yet. He has certainly provided us plenty of time to develop it.

The main point to be derived from Cohen's article is that energy is not a problem even in the very long run. In particular, energy intensive solutions to other human problems are entirely acceptable.

Cohen's web site contains links to many of his articles. He's a particular expert on radiation hazards. His 1990 book The Nuclear Energy Option is on the web page. Its chapter on solar energy is especially interesting in its description of the 1990 hopes for solar energy.