ASPO 6: Have we reached the tipping point?
Posted by Chris Vernon on September 28, 2007 - 9:59am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: aspo, ASPO6 conference [list all tags]
A Report on the ASPO 6 Conference “Time to React” held in Cork, Ireland
It seems to me that we have reached several important tipping points this year in relation to Peak Oil, Climate Change and their impact on public consciousness. Peak oil is a geological tipping point, but I am more interested in psychological tipping points: when Peak Oil enters the general consciousness and stops being a dubious fringe pursuit. I think we may have reached that point, unfortunately at the same time as we are rolling over the peak “plateau”.
Panel session at ASPO6, Cork
Tipping Point 1
“The battle is over – the Peakists have won.” James Schlesinger, former US Energy Secretary and ex-CIA directorWhen people from the “inner circle” of the global elite give overt credence to Peak Oil Theory, then we can say the battle of credibility is won. Schlesinger wouldn’t be committed to a peak date, and he did seem to be in the “Technology Will Save Us” camp, but his pronouncement was welcome.
Tipping Point 2
“A large hole that has to be filled” Mike Rodgers, PFC EnergyMike looked at the statistics of oil exploration and production. He said that exploration was less successful than before. Over the last 10 years we have only found one barrel for every three we use. Oil fields pass over peak and go into decline when they are between 50 and 60% depleted averaging out at 54%. There is a large hole in potential future production “OPEC will reach the critical level of 60% depletion in the later part of the next decade”. PFC’s estimate is that Saudi Arabia is 41% depleted now.
The picture is looking fairly grim.
Tipping Point 3
Insiders agree USGS estimates “wildly overstated”Ray Leonard of Kuwait Energy Co gave us a fascinating insight into a secret no-press, invitation-only conference of oil technologists he attended in November 2006. After many caveats about what he could and couldn’t reveal, he said that behind closed doors many of the oil experts present challenged the rosy USGS projections as “wildly overstated”.
He looked at West Siberia, his area of expertise, where discovery has peaked. Reserve growth would be more important than new discovery. Average recovery had increased from 37 to 43% with improved techniques.
He estimated that West Siberia would provide 80 gigabarrels, with another 6 gigabarrels coming from reserve growth.
Leonard thought that at best unconventional oil which provides 2 million barrels per day today would only double to 4mbpd because of slow extraction rates and environmental consequences.
Leonard was one of several contributors who thought there would be a plateau at 90-100m bpd “in a very high price environment” , but it is difficult to reconcile that with the current flat output of around 83 m bpd and the erosion of megaprojects gains coming onstream by depletion; the largest new field, Kashagan, for example, been delayed two years because of problems. Skrebowski’s April 2006 estimates are a net gain of less than 2mbpd till 2009 declining thereafter.
Tipping Point 4
Not enough UraniumUsing official nuclear industry statistics, CERN nuclear physicist Michael Dittmar showed that there was insufficient uranium to grow nuclear power at more than a modest 0.3% per year, and worse still – the flooding of the Canadian Cigar Lake mine would cause shortages in the next few years, possibly leading to existing plants being shut down because they have no fuel. There will be no nuclear renaissance without sufficient Uranium. Dittmar also dismissed fast breeders: no peer-reviewed evidence that they would work in a valid commercial way; and fusion: not enough tritium can be produced to run them.
Tipping Point 5
Can rationality overcome evolutionary conditioning?Nate Hagens of the Oil Drum gave what was generally felt to be the most stimulating speech of the conference. He analysed our denial of problems, our short-term behavioural emphasis on the present and our reluctance to plan for the future, in terms of cognitive neuroscience.
Our evolution over millions of years biases us towards the short-term gains of food and procreation over long-term planning. Nate showed a hilarious slide of an Irish Elk male, which, in search of reproductive success had grown such huge display horns that they consumed so much energy to build it became extinct.
It wasn’t difficult to get the implication.
Nate also talked about our impulsive behaviour caused by short term urges towards pleasure such as smoking and drinking, which become addictions. We crave stimulus, but it quickly becomes routine so we need a bigger “high”. In a previous existence he was a high-flying broker, acquainted with the very rich, and told of one $100m client who “just needed another $100m to be satisfied”, but when he got there, he found his peer group had $500m so he had to keep competing to stay in the game: we can never have enough – our neurochemical “dopamine” is “a wanting drug”.
This was not a very comforting picture of our response to future energy shortages – in this paradigm we will ignore them for as long as possible, then panic. Later Michael Meacher MP added his opinion on this: “I think we are sleep-walking to doom”, and Lord Ron Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell UK said: “Challenges are so great that urgent interim measures are needed to stop the boat sinking.”
Tipping Point 6
Climate Change is a Coal ProblemJeremy Leggett of Solar Century alleviated some concern about the possible rise in temperature, because the IPCC models rely on IEA figures which put the amount of natural gas and oil around much higher than most peakers. By changing this to reflect lower reserves, Leggett showed there is not enough to push us through the 2° threshold that most climate scientists believe will lead to catastrophe.
Unfortunately there is enough coal: if we burn that too, we are in very serious trouble. China is building two coal-fired power stations per week. The USA, Russia, India and Australia also have substantial reserves of coal and this does not bode well for the atmosphere. Ron Oxburgh said that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology increases the capital cost of a coal-fired power station by 30% and reduces efficiency by around 10%. He added: “If we don’t create technology to cheaply capture carbon we are in very deep trouble.” His overall view was that to mitigate these problems there was no “silver bullet” and that all technologies, including renewables, conservation, nuclear and CCS would need to be deployed as soon as possible.
Can politicians recognise these tipping points and move to reduce the impact of these complex and intractable problems?
Michael Meacher, MP, made a stirring and passionate speech about our multiple problems, singling out air travel as being particularly damaging and wasteful. Responding to a question from the floor about political will, said that current politicians have a poverty of vision, and are keeping their heads down.The success of the Transition Towns movement (Rob Hopkins described it as the fastest-growing political movement he’d ever experienced) shows that there is movement at the grassroots but it is not being mirrored by sufficient intensity at national government level. Several speakers and conference attendees I talked to were not impressed by the Irish government’s apparent inability to recognise the precarious position of Ireland’s electricity generation system, so it is not just the UK government which has blinkers on.
The range of initiatives I heard of from speakers, commercial companies and local groups at the conference was impressive. Meanwhile, the continuous burning of fossil fuels by the heedless mass of vehicles circling the beautiful Cork city centre by day and night continued relentlessly – when will the Padraigs or Roisins in these mostly single-occupant, highly-inefficient ICE vehicles reach their consciousness tipping point? Or will they, as Nate Hagens suggested, discount the future till it is too late, then panic?
Many readers will be familiar with Nate's writings here on The Oil Drum (read his articles here), but it's worth reiterating Julian's point. Perhaps it was because neuroscience was a new subject for an ASPO conference or that he just told us what we already knew to be true but hadn't had articulated but in discussions after his speech it was clear he had made a real impact with the ASPO delegates.
I had some time to speak with Schlesinger after the conference and as Julian says he’s not too concerned about the date. He recognises the problem but more seriously he recognises how we aren’t addressing it. It makes no difference if peak oil 5, 10 or 15 years away if we do nothing to address it. He said it’s going to “hit us between the eyes like a two by four”.
I heartily applaud Jeremy Leggett for comparing "our" understanding of fossil fuel reserves with that of the IPCC and showing the IPCC numbers most likely in error on the high side. This critical conclusion - that there likely isn't enough oil and gas as cause calamity - is very important for understanding and formulating a response to energy depletion and climate change. Leggett's conclusion that it is all about coal is exactly right and where the climate change debate needs to focus in my opinion. This is the same conclusion reached by NASA's Dr James Hansen earlier this year in his paper Implications of "Peak Oil" for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate.
Thanks Chris (and Julian)
Im traveling again so this will likely be my only reply here.
The Irish Elk was used as an example because runaway sexual selection over hundreds of thousands of years ill prepared them for the resource change that occurred in the Younger Dryas cooling period 10-15,000 years ago. Since forage density declined, they couldn't obtain the nutrients they had become accustomed to during the warmer climate which were required to support such a large antler mass, so their bodies had to leach phosphorous and calcium from their bones - all to keep the horns big - thats the leading theory on why they died off. Humans too have been selected at being good at acquiring resources, and via sexual selection, moving up the mating ladder with conspicuous consumption being the current 'antlers'. And now we too, are going to be facing a time of 'environmental' change.
Fortunately we have something the elk did not. A huge forebrain of intellect, and culture, which can move faster than genes. But as the writer points out, via hedonic adaptation (and often addiction) we quickly habituate to new stimuli and need newer stimuli to feel the same 'rush', etc. This results in bigger and bigger antlers. We also are figuring out that we are not happier with 'more' (larger antlers), but ARE happier with more social interactions, community etc. Thus we cannot change our evolutionary wiring to want 'more' - we can only change how we define or perceive 'more'. So the 64,000 barrel question is how can we discard our 4 meter antlers (conspicuous consumption) that are requiring all our nutrients (oil, water, ecosystems etc)? Any answers will likely originate from individually and tribally selfish reasons (making changes because it improves ones own life or ones 'group', which is usually quite small in number). Knowing this is a huge advantage
After a few years of various gradients of fear/apprehension of upcoming dislocations, I now view Peak Oil almost as a gift - as it will force us to take a hard look at the social traps that are spinning and getting larger but not really getting too far (see Genuine Progress Indicator).
I do plan to write on this when I get back from mushroom hunting. (I'll be wearing camo so as not to scare them..;)
Amanita pantherina should be out about now and they don't scare easy, quite the reverse one might say. Also could cure one of wanting more too ... at least till ones universe quietens down.
I'm planning on checking to see if the Chantarelles are out now, I live a quite life these days myself, not even a hair of the psilocybe anymore:)
Yes we could have made Genuine Progress too bad we preferred to make Potage. BTW you are sitting inside one big social trap right now, good for you going mushroom hunting ... 'The Great Out of Doors' ... now that's what we were built for.
Good hunting.
Mushrooms are great. You can easily get a few days worth of food with a quick trip to the nearest forest. (At least in Finland where there are plenty of forests). And they taste delicious. There are also a lot more edible mushrooms out there than people tend to think. And no, I'm not talking about Amanita Muscaria. ;)
Hahaha!
Did you see camo'd Matt 'DEFCON1' Savinar in "A Crude Awakening" -nice one Matt. I especially like the nice touch of emergency ration stores in the background. Can you put some camo grease on next time and have a subline reading "shot from a secret location"... hehe.
and Nate, I really liked the 'Dumbo found worrying over global warming gets eaten by tigers' sketch too, keep 'em coming...
Nick.
speaking of Matt, aka 'Chimp who can drive'
If you are reading this, your LATOC site appears to be permanently down:
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I am beginning to miss my daily dose of doom...
Its been like this all week...
Thanks Chris for the extra bits. Can you dwell a bit mo on the following bits:
Which numbers? The oil, gas or coal reserve numbers they are using?
Just to make sure: the real data from the field on warming & ice melting on poles is happening faster than their worst case scenario (latest IPCC high scenario 2007).
Very good point! A lot of people have been trying to hammer this point home elsewhere.
However, to make sure I understand where you stand.
This (burning the rest of the oil) is "no problem" IF and ONLY IF:
- we do not increase emissions significantly from ANY other resources (yes, coal is the most abundant, but there are other potential emissions sources too)
- we do not see the rapid depletion of oil as a problem by itself (cf. Oil Depletion Protocol)
That is, using the rest of the oil (rapidly) might be a problem for us, regardless of climate change AND considering our voracious energy appetite, we are going to be using lots of other emitting primary sources other than "all of oil" too.
Here's what I wrote in another thread on this topic:
"I once looked at the numbers with a friend and to my surprise, Jeremy Legget did something similar (with slightly different numbers) in his speech on the conference.
Our result:
Gross Climate Limit: 4.90 GtCeq/y (IPCC for 2000-2100)
- Land use change: 1.60 GtCeq/y (IPCC for 2000-2100)
- Livestock GHG: 1.25 GtCeq/y (FAO, for 2004)
= Net Climate Limit for Energy: 2.05 GtCeq/y max.
I.e. Net Climate Limit for Energy for 2000-2100: 205 GtCeq
(GtCeq means gigatons of carbon equivalent. There are other units around, like CO2eq, so if you want to compare, be careful!)
If you compare this "climate limit" of 2.05 GtCeq with the various reserve estimates, you find that even with the most conservative fossil fuel reserve estimates, we can just afford to burn all the oil and gas that's there but only if we do not burn a single gram of coal at the same time.
So, as many speaker said during the conference: Peak Oil will not save us from Global Warming, especially not if CTL and tar sands will be used as large-scale substitutes.
Cheers,
Davidyson
Reference to the FAO report:
http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf
"
Point six is the issue that resonates with me. How does peak oil and climate change intersect. Well, the fact is that oil and gas reserves have been wildly over-estimated. Because of that, there simply isn't enough of the stuff to lead to the catastrophic problems that are predicted in the models, and all of it is going to get used regardless of any concessions that might be gained regarding CAFE standards etc. Those fights, I suggest are counterproductive. Because of the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, that carbon is going to be released. It is essentially a fait accompli. All we are arguing about is who gets to burn it and the relatively short time frame in which it is burned. Conservation makes sense in terms of mitigating the impact of scarcity, but not as a matter of dealing with climate change. The entire issue of avoiding the worst of what climate change has in store for our decendents is in how we deal with coal. And I would suggest that since any environmental struggle is something of a David and Goliath struggle against intrenched heavily funded economic interests, fighting on all fronts is doomed to failure. Focusing on one, coal, evens the odds to some extent. The battle cry should be "No new coal fired power plants without carbon sequestration" If we could pull that off, we have a chance.
SW
Someone drew my attention to a Stanford panel in November last year in which former Secretary of State George P. Shultz was reported to have said something about Peak Oil. Finally was able to track down what he said. He didn't explicitly refer to Peak Oil, but he did say:
"But I don't want to have you leave that oil question sitting on the table. And I want to say, looking at all the different things that go wrong because of oil, how many times do we have to be hit on the head with a two-by-four before we make a determined effort to use less oil."
(Link not handy, but it was called the Anxious Times Roundtable.)
Also was listening to the recent interview with Roger Morris on Electric Politics last night. Seemed like in some ways he wasn't yet fully attuned to the seriousness of Peak Oil, yet I think he also used the two-by-four metaphor.
Two barrels of oil are used for each one found. $100 oil anyone?
"September 21, 2007
ROME -- For the peak-oil crowd, that merry band of doomsters who believe global oil production is about to go into irreversible decline and plunge us into a new Stone Age, the timing couldn't have been better. As the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas was holding its conference in Cork, Ireland, earlier this week, oil prices conveniently set record prices.
..............................
............................
The predictions for oil at $100-plus a barrel are now no more far-fetched than oil at $50.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070921.IBREGULY21/TPS...
"that merry band of doomsters"
Which is no different than "that doomsterish band of merrymakers" !
Are they wearing camouflage tights?
We're butch!
--C
Speak for yourself
jmygann,
Actually the finding rate is more gloomy than the annual reports would let us believe. The replacement rate is always given as barrels of oil equivalent, or B.O.E., figured at 6 MCF(thousand cubic feet) equals 1 barrel of oil.
Natural gas isn't oil. A car can be altered to burn NG, but there are few road vehicles using N.G., and it can its expensive to alter NG into other hydrocarbon products.
Natural gas isn't equivalent on a price basis either. NG is going to average around $6.00/mcf as a sales price because of the huge LNG imports into the US from stranded gas overseas and the decline in the US manufacturing base. There's also a big increase in offshore production-the Independence Hub is adding about 25% to US domestic production and started this year. At $6/MCF natural gas would have to recieve $12.19/MCF to equal oil in revenue to the producers and revenue owners at $83.00/bbl.
So when Exxon/Mobil says they replaced twice its reserves on a BOE basis, the figures aren't accurate, especially considering that the gas tends to be in areas where the gas is unproduceable without large investment in LNG compression and the world market is already oversupplied. I just inherited some stock in XOM, Chevron and Devon. I think I'm going to sell it and invest in some oil production because of this differential and oil prices rising. If the stock analists ever figure this out it will make for a large, permanent shift down in the price of the big boy's stock because of the huge write-offs that they will have to take. Of course the SEC is a lot more responsible to investment banks and large cap companies that to investors like me with our little chump change, so it will be awhile before they are forced to acknowledge the truth. It depends on how long bi oil can keep revenues up with prior discoveries and refinery and marketing profits. The time bomb is ticking away, we just don't know the explosion date. Bob Ebersole
What are the present ideas on when we might see world peak NG according to Oil Drum sources ?
DocScience
XOM books just enough qatar gas every year to show a plus in boe reserves. IMO the majors simply can't replace their reserves any more... except very expensively in Alberta. IMO the best places to invest are small us e&p's, plus one intermediate.
I like GPOR best - fabulous potential in their second LA field, Hackberry, where they are using 3d seismic to identify pools left behind in an old field, plus they have a good play in Alberta. Then OXY and ARD.
With regard to uranium, production will almost certainly exceed supply by 2015.
At the world biggest discovered deposit, Olympic Dam reserves have been upgraded to 2.2 million tonnes from the 750 thousand tones in the 2006 IAEA report. BHP-B still haven't defined the resource, 2.2 million tonnes is their latest minimum estimate.
Ironically Olympic Dam in Australia has the opposite problem to Cigar Lake in Canada..not enough water. The mine expansion requires augmenting local groundwater supplies from a coastal desal plant 300km away, plus several hundred megawatts of electrical power to run the mine, township and multiple processing streams.
A logical person might think the desal and electrical generation could be done by a nuclear plant, coincidentally helping out regional water shortages and reducing indirect fossil fuel inputs. The proposed pit 4km X 3.5km X 1km deep will otherwise require staggering amounts of diesel to excavate. While the region faces a crippling drought and high fuel prices local politicians sip lattes and mull over how awful it is. No wonder the incoming BHP CEO wanted to close down the processing plant and just send shiploads of crushed rock to China.
High uranium prices will be partly due to political dithering..I guess it does help conserve the resource though.
Thanks for all the information about the Cork conference.
There seems to be one glaring omission though. What about the politics of peak oil? How can one ignore the politics of it all?
I don't believe in a technical fix for Peak Oil. Also there's no realistic alternative to oil. So what do we do? Well, much like climate change, there is a 'solution', only it's painful. We have to drastically cut our consumption of energy. One of my chums who is involved in both fields, oil and climate studies, reckons we should aim for a 75% reduction over the next twenty-five years! That's if we're serious about mitigating the worst effects of runaway global warming. This of course implies a dramatic change in the way we live.
Fundamentally I view Peak Oil as massive political problem, which makes real solutions very difficult, because we're talking about Power. Who has power in our society and how do they use this power? I'm talking about raw power here; economic, political and military power.
Already one can see that the Power Elite have an 'answer' to Peak Oil - invade and grab as much as you can, while you still have the ability to do so. Access to oil can only be garanteed by actually controling it on the ground, preferably by putting an army on top of it!
Such a policy by the powerful to physically sieze control of the major sources of oil, is, of course, a very high risk strategy.
The problem the rest of us have is, how do we reverse this dangerous strategy without wrestling control of the State from the elite who are in power now? Surely nobody really believes our interests are in any meaningful way the same as those of the powerful elite that runs things for their own narrow self-interest? This has never been true and it's even further from the truth today as society rapidly polarizes and gap between the rich and the rest of us widens explosively.
So, if we're serious about change and developing an alternaive and sustainable economic and social model, we cannot ignore the tough political struggle that lies ahead.
Politics missing. Quite so. I don’t know what Nate Hagens said exactly, so this may not apply to his talk. Images of Man - his essential characteristics, his relations with others, the world, God, his duties, and so on, change throughout history. Of course the images - what the ideal, or epistemic human is or is not - are the product of science, like medecine, society (hunter gatherers vs. the population of NY), and culture, including religion and myths.
The current mostly anglo-saxon view is fundamentalist or essentialist, it mixes up aspects of Evolution, principally chat about genes - a very deterministic stance - to one of its bastard offshoots, popular Social Darwinism, which accentuates competition and seems tied to certain economic mantras, with, somewhat tangentially, elements from cognitive psychology, or neuroscience, which is about how human brains function is certain very delimited areas (eg. visual perception, speech, etc.)
On the biological side, gene-environment interactions, adaption, assimilation, etc. are absent from the (popular) image; from the general philosophical end, it all drifts pretty close to Ayn Rand’s work - man as an individual striver - and psychologically, social interaction and the functioning of groups is left off. Overall, it is not an appealing image, partly because it is so rigid, fundamentalist, and a-historical (which implies no future), evacuates a moral dimension, etc.
The whole cultural-cum-social side is swept away, and therefore politics - a sort of conscious, worked-out, higher level or social organisation - goes down the toilet too. It is as if these aspects can no longer be examined, or discussed, or at least not in a broader scope (one may be for or against Bush, for or against a gas tax..). The ‘body politic’, an old fashioned term to be sure, no longer exists!
We have allowed ourselves to forget what has given us a workable politics to begin with. From the Magna Carta Libertatum to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we have endevored to limit power to avoid despotism. Oil and nuclear power have fundemetally undermined these efforts. The usefulness of oil for projecting military power and the deep connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons have built an unassailable preserve for the concentration of power. Nuns are imprisoned for peaceful protests. A minister is injured and arrested in the very capitol where the right to petition should be most honored.
Eisenhower's warning about this concentration of power has not been heeded and now our politicians seek not to serve but to participate in enourmous power when they seek office. It cannot be spoken that our war is about oil or our missle defense is actually agression because to do so would begin to limit this overweaning power that has become the reason for our existance.
This is the political environment in which the peak oil issue exists. The atrophied body politic cannot look at it because it seems to imperil its facile abdication of power to fancied military necessity. We have a willful blindness because the practice of vigilance would reveal our deep deep decay.
Yet, because the concentration of power is centered around physical energy, we are seeing a new element that has not been part of our heritage before. In Macbeth, the physical world provides portents against the despot, for us, the physical world is actually rebelling against our hubris. This rebellion may yet shock us into deep democracy and a return to a workable politics just as the deep shock at the tactic of non-violence brought some moral reform in the last century. We still have the documents, the Magna Carta, the Declarations, the Constitutions from which to draw lessons. We even have surpisingly elegent technical ways to decentralize physical power and come into harmony with the rebelling physical world. But the degree to which we manage to do this will depend most on the degree to which you are will to commit to a civic life and to bring others along with you. Will you join the Kiwanis or the Elks or stay after Church to discuss oil and politics? Will you run for office even though it is hopeless just to make the dialog richer? These fading and tattered civic institutions must be revitalized and this takes a commitment of time which we now devote to being good shoppers, recieving our instructions from TV before heading to the mall. Can you join a bowling league? Can you be a citizen first and never let anyone define you as a consumer? Will you always protest when your government calls you a customer? These are the practices of vigilance and if you take them up, and bring others along we'll have a body politic that can live and breath and see and shake off the miasma of the concentration physical power that is enslaving us.
Chris
Eisenhower's warning about this concentration of power has not been heeded and now our politicians seek not to serve but to participate in enourmous power when they seek office. (...) This is the political environment in which the peak oil issue exists.
Yes. Specialization (complexity for some), and very top-down hierachical organization is either going to killl us, or, optimistically, accounts for how we got to where we are now and ensures the future, see techno fixes - or both at once...!
On the ground, the problem is that all seek to associate with power, which trickles thru the complex system. Ignoring it, or saying no to it, is not a reasonable option. Even mediaeval society, with its unfair, rigid if patchy power structure, left more room for individual nonsense or initiative, though perhaps one should not compare on only this point, there are too many differences.
Until about 1700 technology used to be a question of best practices, transmitted culturally generation to generation, and innovation, which gave an edge but was slow to spread, that is tested again and again in function of common sense criteria, physical possibilities, cultural acceptance, the support needed from social organization (slavery, for example, but today many are slaves without being called that - their food has been outsourced!)
Once fossil fuels were harnessed a different era began.
Did you mean demand? Because Uranium production was 39,000 tonnes and demand was 67,000 tonnes.
If true that's great news, would you please share some details with us. I.e sources of growth in production and expected production rates.
Thanks.
I wrote a post about this in the beginning of this year with some pictures and links for reference.
The main body is in Finnish language, but images with legends are in English.
I'll include just the images here:
World Annual Uranium Production (2005)
World Annual Uranium Requirements (2005)
When looking at the 1st two images, please note the World Total sum and compare Production to Requirements. There was a nice -25245 ton/year gap there in 2005.
Summary:
The program that recovers uranium for nuclear reactors from decommissioned FSU warheards is coming to an end.
This remarkable cache of uranium has helped to supply the markets for some time.
When it ends (and it can do so in a fairly short timespan), it may cause a temporal not insignificant shortfall in supply compared to demand.
This at least is the view of some of the analysts.
It'd be nice to hear more on this from somebody who is really deep in the industry.
The whole issue has been for so long known that I'd be surprised if it hasn't been taken into account in various ways for some time already.
So much misunderstanding. If Uranium were free, nuclear power would cost 98-99% of what it does now. They cannot drive more consumption with more supply. What incentive does that mining company have to prove those reserves (to prove anti-nuclear activists wrong?)? Would there really be something like 150 new reactors in the works around the world right now if the resource will run out in 2015?
The industry reserve numbers are meaningless. We need to look at what we know about the distribution of Uranium in the crust. That analysis show that there are about one trillion tons recoverable at very high to relatively high EROEI. And then a couple of more orders of magnitude for Thorium and other fuel cycles.
The IAEA Redbook (2006 press release) showed 85 years of conventional uranium (4.7 million tonnes - 2004 use rates) and 633 years (35 million tonnes) if we include the harder to reach uranium in phosphate ore bodies.
Even before the recent Olympic statements there was enough conventional uranium to fuel all of the present reactors vessels to end of life, and fuel a complete replacement fleet for their practical service lives.
This looks to be a prima facie case for building a reactor or two a month for the next few decades.
I suppose we can point to the usual non-technical suspects; NIMBYism, misguided environmentalism, and political pressures for the slow development of more reactors, but I'd like to see a deep analysis of the energy and economic factors. (Something on the order of Fredrik Robelius' Doctoral Thesis on oil.)
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I think that such a study is lacking because it would put a pin in the ballon of misguided nuclear boosterism. I am amazed at what passes for a reference here.
Chris
Still at it I guess. What, you're not satisfied with solar at 25% of electricity in 25 years. At least they have a reference; I know you don't like to supply them.
I attempt not to link to weak or flawed sites when it is clear which I am discussing. A link would boost stats and thus amount to spreading disinformation.
As pointed out in the report on the conference, only speculative resources can be said to be "available" to support increased use of nuclear power. It would not have occured to you, since you are so credulous, that the French have a very strong interest in building reactors regardless of their usability since they get paid for the building, not the power, and they are also in a position to profit from uranium scarcity since they have a large and costly enrichment operation. Higher uranium prices mean that they can charge more for thier fuel product.
Chris
Frances neighbours pay for delivered kWh and not the number of buildings in France.
The French market for reactors is way past saturated. They want to build them here if we are foolish enough.
I think a small misunderstanding.
The companies building the reactors, get paid for the building (construction) of the reactors.
Those companies do not get paid by how much electricity the reactors produce.
DocScience
I strongly second that. Those industry numbers are so misleading because people do not understand the difference between the oil and Uranium industries. The producing industry does not have any incentive to prove reserves beyond the mid term needs of their customers, especially where a greater supply will not drive demand. It costs money to find and prove reserves. For the oil industry, mid term demand (20-50 years) is greater than the known world supply, so the industry has a need to try to identify the total world supply. For Uranium, the industry is looking at this vast supply which all those people ready to put down $3 billion for new plants know is out there. So the industry only needs to identify their mid term inventory. Beyond that it would be wasting money. Like an aircraft manufacturer trying to line up engine suppliers for 100 years from now. The business need of trying to convince those of us having these pointless arguments is not that strong. Their customers know the deal.