Nuclear Power and Climate Change
David Fleming
OUT OF OIL, OUT OF GAS, OUT OF URANIUM...
Nuclear power faces a depletion problem, too.
Prospect (Submitted text)
June 2005
There are two things in favour of nuclear power. It is based on an energy process which does not produce carbon dioxide. And it is a way of generating energy which is not directly at risk from the looming scarcities affecting oil and gas. These two killer-arguments tend to be conflated into one persuasive and rhetorical question: "What's the alternative?"
There are arguments against it, too, and most of them are well known. It is expensive and, except with the help of government subsidy, it offers little potential for profit. It uses funds which would be better applied to renewable energy and to improving the efficiency with which energy is used. It leaks low-level carcinogenic wastes into the air and water. It produces high-level wastes, requiring standards of treatment and storage which are seldom met. It produces the materials for nuclear proliferation. Its accidents can potentially devastate continents.
But there are two other arguments against nuclear power which are not
so well recognised. The first is that nuclear power actually produces
quite a lot of carbon dioxide; every stage in the process uses fossil
fuels (oil and gas) with the exception of fission itself. Uranium ore
has to be mined and then milled to extract the uranium oxide from the
surrounding rock; it has to be enriched; the wastes have to be processed
and buried, safely; nuclear power stations have to be constructed, maintained
and then eventually dismantled, chopped into bits and stored away.
But it is the second one which is the shocker: nuclear power depends on
a supply of uranium ores from scarce, rich deposits, which face a depletion
problem every bit as serious as that of oil and gas. Nuclear power is
within sight of the time where that rich ore is no longer available. There
would then be little point in using the poorer grades of ore instead,
for the energy it could get out of the process would be greater than the
energy it had to put into it.
Now, the question of much how much rich uranium ore there is left would not matter very much if the industry were to continue on its present small scale. So, the question is: what is the job that nuclear power is likely to be asked to do? Well, a serious contribution enough to make a difference might mean bringing on nuclear power to replace the gas and coal now used to generate electricity; a more ambitious one but necessary, given the scale of our energy problem would be to provide the primary energy needed to generate the hydrogen needed to replace the use of petrol and diesel on road and rail. If it did all that, then gas could be reserved for the jobs it does best providing fuel for industry and households. If applied worldwide, this would, in principle, solve the energy problem for some years to come.
That would, of course, be a renaissance for nuclear power. The waste problem would be very large, too, so the nuclear industry would be forced to meet impeccable standards of waste management, treatment and storage; it would have to rehabilitate landscapes after they had been mined for uranium; and it would end for ever the practice of (for instance) holding depleted uranium in drums while trying to think of something better to do with it. The industry would then be forced to use ever-poorer uranium ores as the richer ones were used up and its need for energy from fossil fuels would now start to rise fast. It is not the mining process that makes the really serious demands for energy, but the milling. All too soon, it would be necessary to mill hard ores with a uranium content of 0.02 percent that is, one part in five thousand: for every tonne of uranium oxide they extracted, the industry's raw material suppliers would have to mine, mill and dispose of some 5,000 tonnes of granite; at the same time, it would be reduced to milling soft ores (sandstone) with a uranium content of just 0.01 percent 10,000 tonnes of ore to be mined, milled and disposed of for every tonne of uranium extracted.
It is with ores at these grades that nuclear power hits its limits; this is where the energy-balance turns against it. If ores any poorer than this were to be used, while at the same time proper standards of waste control in all its operations were to be maintained, nuclear power production would go into energy deficit: it would be putting more energy into the process than it could extract from it. Its contribution to meeting the world¹s energy needs would become negative.
At present, nuclear power is not one of the major producers of energy. It accounts for about 16 percent of the world¹s electricity supply, which in turn accounts for about 16 percent of all the energy produced, so that its total contribution to the world¹s energy needs is about 2.5 percent. Suppose, however, that the industry were to be set up on a scale large enough to make a difference. How long could it provide the needed energy before, for practical purposes, it had used up all the uranium ores rich enough to produce a positive energy balance? Well, if it supplied the world with all its electricity, then the total quantity of useful ores on the planet would be sufficient to keep the nuclear industry going for just six years. If, in addition, the world¹s road and rail transport fleet were to be run on hydrogen derived from nuclear power, then the useful life of the industry would be about two years. As provider of a few token reactors to show that governments are trying, it could keep going, rather pointlessly, for another 40 years. But the essential fact is this: as a serious new source of energy, nuclear power is a non-starter.
The first response to these estimates will of course be to dispute them. This is what happens whenever there is a sign that environmental realities could be seriously inconvenient. The primary aim is usually to rubbish the whistleblower; in this case, the main whistleblowers¹ are Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, both nuclear scientists at the end of distinguished careers, now free of the need to appease any institution, and with the courage to cope with a great deal of criticism and worse.
There are four main criticisms. First, it is argued that there is plenty of uranium available, that reserves are abundant, and will become more so when the demand for it strengthens. But there is little to support this. During the 1960-1980s, exploration for uranium deposits was intensive; most that was there to be found was found. Some small deposits doubtless remain to be discovered, but the geology of uranium is now well known: there are almost no certainly no major new discoveries ahead.
Secondly, critics point out that uranium is an abundant element; there
is plenty of it in the earth's crust. But, since almost all of it is in
concentrations of some 1-3 parts per million, the energy needed to extract
it would be far more than could ever be recovered.
The third line of defence is to point out that there are huge quantities
of uranium in sea water but this criticism has nothing in its favour either,
for the concentrations of uranium are as low as one part in 20 billion,
well outside the range of being useful.
Fourthly, there is the argument that we could use uranium more efficiently
by developing breeder reactors, which would be 100 times as efficient
as today's thermal reactors. But, after 50 years of extremely expensive
research, they are still not technically feasible.
So long as the argument remains bogged down at the level of whether the problem exists or not, governments will consider themselves free to do exactly as they want. They will insist that there is no alternative to nuclear power, and nuclear power stations will be built persistently in Britain and around the world enough to provide a general sense that help is at hand, but not enough to have any positive effect on the problem of energy and climate change. What will be significant will be the negative consequences. An expansion in the nuclear power industry will suck up the funds which should be made available for conservation and renewables. It will be a constant source of low-level radiation, of materials for proliferation, and of carbon dioxide emissions. It will produce some very expensive energy. And then it will hit its limits. The industry will be left with huge reserves of low-grade uranium ores, too poor to be usable, and an equally huge inheritance of waste and contamination which has to be dealt with. And the rest of us will be left with a problem: there will be no Plan C: no new industry ready to fill the series of energy gaps left in sequence by oil, gas, uranium...
Just at the moment, we have an opportunity. Very efficient, manageable, small-scale solutions focused on renewables and conservation technologies, and applied quickly and comprehensively do exist. But they need single-minded planning, big investment and training programmes; they have the advantage that, unlike any other option, they are actually feasible; and they do not conceal within them some terrible snag that no one dares talk about. That is, there could be real solutions to the rapidly-unfolding energy crisis. If sacrifices are now made to the voracious demands of nuclear power, that chance will be lost.
Published version available at:
Prospect
Magazine June 2005: 111
David Fleming
No more uranium
There is not enough uranium on the planet for a large-scale global nuclear
industry.
last updated 14 June, 2005