![]() | Saturday open thread | The Oil Drum | We Were Warned: The Spelling of the Word Has an Extra "u" That Many People Forget.. | ![]() |
106 comments on A concern about Canadian gas and the oil sands
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
106 comments on A concern about Canadian gas and the oil sands
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“Considering the many productive uses of petroleum, burning it for fuel is like burning a Picasso for heat.”
—Big Oil Executive
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
Exactly.
The majority of people who SUPPORT fission nuclear power with market arguments ignore how nuclear power is not a possibility without the government handout of support.
Not to mentiopn the limited nature of fissionable material.
The abundance of fissionable material is probably greater than the lowball estimates. OTOH, contrary to the cornucopians most granites are probably not going to ground up for the contained U235. However, though a admittedly a diffuse source, even some granite is much hotter than average and might be considered ore if it ever comes down to that.
If we are going to continue using fission reactors over the medium term [50 plus years] answer to the availability of fissionable material is the fast breeder reactor. The technology can apparently be made to work.
The issue has been the reality that plutonium is easier to enrich to weapons grade that U235. Given that in addition to the long standing nuclear powers, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Isreal, [and maybe South Africa, Brasil and some others] have the bomb, that genie is already out of the bottle.
The abundance of fissionable material is probably greater than the lowball estimates. OTOH
STILL limited. Like oil was limited in 1890 amd 'we' are now discussing this limited nature today, the use of fission is limited.
have the bomb, that genie is already out of the bottle.
But that does not address the need for long-term protection of nuclear waste. 'The Bomb' is preventable just by not using
'em, Nuclear waste is preventable only by not making it. After it is made, you have a many year protection need - longer than any human society has existed.
Everything is limited. The wind & sun energy is limited to - isn't the sun sending limited energy to the Earth? Even the whole Universe contains a limited amount of energy.
The question is can a given resource be sufficient for such an amount of time to justify the investments we make to develop it. With hundreds of years of conventional uranium reserves and many thousands of years if we start using breeders I can assure you that the answer for nuclear is YES.
Link please?
The European Nuclear Society states that with the current reserves "all 439 world-wide operated nuclear power plants can be supplied for several decades".
But if you are talking about ramping up the use of nuclear power (as half the world is saying), then that "several decades" will be shortened quite drastically.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium
To say that "we have several decades of uranium left" is like saying "we have only 100 days of food left in the world" (which can make you want to shoot yourself if you don't give it a second thought).
We are nowhere near to reaching the geological limits because what is being included in the official reserves now is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. This link for example gives more than 100 years of U under 130$:
http://www.inb.gov.br/english/reservasMundiais.asp
But this is again relative, because should U go to 100$ and above (from the current ~ $35), the breeders reactors will become competitive, meaning that you have to multiply these figures by a factor of 100. In addition many new discoveries will be found all around the world if we simply start looking for them. Even now enormous amounts of nuclear fuel are simply stored away as waste, because the processed nuclear fuel contains plutonium and unburnt uranium that can be used. But the prices are so low that it is not worthed the investment and overcoming the NIMBYSsm.
Regarding economics - even at $130, the price of fuel will be below 30% of the production costs, assuming (wrongfully of course) that the sales prices in 100 years will remain at current levels.
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html
Very informative, reminding you once again to question your assumptions before making projections for the future (especially far in the future).