Peak Uranium

From: On the road to ruin
by Michael Meacher

[...]
The supply of uranium has already reached its peak, in 1981. There are 440 nuclear reactors worldwide,
and the world produces just over half the uranium ore these plants consume each year.

At present, the gap is filled by using the plutonium from dismantled cold war nuclear weapon stockpiles.
But this source is drying up and will end by 2013, so the industry is trying to find and develop new uranium
mines, mainly in Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan. However, those under development will fill only half
the current gap, not to mention new demand from the 28 nuclear plants under construction worldwide,
added to China's plan to build 30 new plants by 2020. As a result, about a quarter of nuclear power plants
could be forced to shut down within a decade because of a lack of fuel.

Developing a uranium mine is expensive and complex since the material is hazardous - it takes about 15
years from discovery to production. Therefore, even if a massive effort were now launched to find and
develop new mines, there will still be an eight-year gap after 2013. China is already scrambling to corner
contracts for uranium ore, and uranium prices have soared by 400% over the past six years.

While the element uranium is commonly available, concentrated uranium ore suitable for energy is limited.
 Uranium ore is rock containing uranium mineralisation in concentrations that can be mined economically.

The main argument used by the nuclear industry for downplaying this crisis is that, if necessary, thorium can
 be used instead of uranium as reactor fuel, and thorium is abundant. However, the US, Russia, Germany, In
dia, and Japan have all studied thorium reactors for 30 years, yet no commercial thorium reactor has ever
been constructed. Another idea is to reuse uranium in "fast breeder" reactors. This is feasible, but such
reactors are more complex, more costly and more dangerous, which is why the US halted their use in
the 1970s and the UK abandoned the idea in 1994. There is, at present, no serious large-scale attempt to
convert to either thorium or breeder reactors anywhere in the world, making widespread closures of
traditional uranium fuelled reactors within a decade a real possibility.

Meanwhile, as demand rises and supplies fail to keep up, a 10-fold increase in the price of uranium over the
next few years is not impossible.

[...]
The imminent uranium shortage has been admitted by the World Nuclear Association, which provided a
chart of the unfolding crisis on its website in July. But while the nuclear industry is comfortable with
debating the safety of nuclear reactors it will not discuss the uranium supply shortfall.

Philip Dewhurst, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, has said it is necessary to examine
replacing those nuclear generators that are due to be closed "whether the uranium supply is plentiful
or not". But, as uranium hoarding begins, a major shortage could arise sooner than 2013...

http://www.epolitix.com/EN/MPWebsites/Michael+Meacher/40303555-df13-4f07-aa3e-467305d89ae5.htm

and (with links to charts)
http://world-nuclear.org/sym/2003/connor.htm
such as demand forecasts from 2003 (probably revised upward since)