Hell if you're worried about the low employment in the Uranium industry, lets build a couple of power stations. one to replace the brown coal power station at Port Augusta that just closed would be great.

For Trump's Sake!

Such negativity Greeno.

I feel a warm inner glow about the explosive properties of highly enriched Uranium.

Don't you?

Yes the market is oversupplied with raw unprocessed uranium. We should process it here, using the much cheaper Aussie invented pulsed laser light method.

And with the rubbish removed, export it as a finished product that is power grade only. Thereby reducing the total transport component cost.

And given newer vastly safer reactors, we could and should use it here to decarbonize the economy?

And use the innovation of others to build, mass produced in factories, modules that are cooled by helium and able to be trucked onsite and producing power within days? And react to increased need by just bolting on another factory manufactured module, which as the preferred model, may well make uranium derived power, much cheaper than coal?
Alan B.

Jim Green,

Your irrational anti-nuke rants are contributing to killing people. Since 1985 round 5 million early deaths have been caused by the irrational beliefs, propaganda and disinformation spread by you and your ilk.

If the costs of nuclear power had continued at the rate demonstrated up to about 1970: https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/, and deployment continued at the rate reached by 1985, i.e. 30 GW per year, then nuclear would have avoided about 5 million immediate and latent fatalities between 1985 and 2015. If, however, the accelerating rate that was demonstrated from 1960 to 1976, had continued, nuclear would have replaced the equivalent of all coal and most gas by 2000.

The anti-nukes are the main cause of the disruption to progress. If they were objective, rational and not in denial, they’d accept they are responsible for 5 million fatalities, lower standard of living, less people with electricity than would have been … and a lot more.

The anti-nukes, like Jim Green, have a lot to answer for.

See the excellent article published 2 weeks ago by Michael Schellenberger: ‘CLEAN ENERGY IS ON THE DECLINE — HERE'S WHY, AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT’ http://epillinois.org/news/2016/5/1/why-environmentalists-changed-their-mind-on-nuclear

See the debate between Mark Jacobson (passionate but irrational advocate for 100% renewables) and the rational and objective Michael Schellenberger (plus two others): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh7aaW8Leco&feature=youtu.be

$US28/lb is about $A85/kg which seems like good money to me. Cigar Lake Canada is a high cost mine that has to be continuously pumped to remove water. Our Olympic Dam is dry and has copper, gold and silver as well as uranium. In situ leach mines like Honeymoon need a higher uranium price. Think of it as saving some for later.

It's possible 4th generation technology may one day mean we no longer need to mine fresh uranium. Could be why China, Russia and India are putting more into it than other countries. The beauty of current cheap uranium is that we can use it once in 3rd generation plants, put it to one side and get more value out of it later if the price increases. The low price means it is easier to displace coal.

And besides Australia can't build nuclear weapons unless we build totally mistimed, uneconomic, multi-$Billion, power reactors

- as nuclear fuel cycle learning wheels?

Actually pete, building a bomb is simple. Albeit, none simpler than a fusion bomb the size of a grapefruit, and able to be transported in a hand carried in a shielded embassy bag, as opposed to an old fashioned fission bomb, even there one only needs enriched uranium and no reactors per se.

What I'm saying is, that particular horse has already bolted minus the feared reactor or nuclear technology.

All we might do if we build a reactor or ten is add to a massive nuclear stockpile already large enough to destroy the world ten times over.

Actually the only way to absolutely prevent this material finding its way into bombs is to use and reuse it in FBR's!

And there we could reach some sort of sane agreement that turns hundreds of planet killing bombs into peaceful power, with no way back into bombs once the cycle is completed, which by the way could reduce the half life to just 300 years

Surely we humans have enough nouse to store the stuff for that long?

I won't tell you how to build a fusion bomb as that would spoil your warm and comfortable warm inner glow as you wake up and smell the Co2 in the morning. But can confirm, no reactor or nuclear training wheels are necessary.

Yes nuclear power is dangerous, but less so, than coal fired power which has to date cost more lives, and given the massive expansion holds vastly more threat to the entire world than new helium cooled pebble reactors or cheaper than coal thorium

Given access to the necessary materials, building bombs is just not that hard. Even so, the modest size fusion bomb, could if detonated in a precise spot, turn our little world into a new if small and short lived star. And no bunker deep enough to survive that!

Neither of these outcomes is reliant on a reactor or nuclear training wheels.

However, we do rely on those who have this knowledge remaining patient with obdurate obtuse folks with a hidden anti development anti population agenda.
Alan B.

Considering that in April India cleared the legal and insurance hurdles, and announced that it is proceeding with about 60 reactors by 2035, and roughly the same in China, I would take Jim Green's predictions with a little salt.

What we have here is a classic supply bubble similar to what is happening with iron ore whose price collapsed to $40/t from about $170/t, yet no one is silly enough to say that steel production is doomed.

Below is something challenging the the "Linear No Threshold" model ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model ) of the effects of radiation.

http://radiationeffects.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-Chernobyl-Conundrum-der-Spiegel-5.2016.pdf

Meanwhile, the fear-mongers stand firm against the only safe and economically feasible solution to AGW.

I don't know what to think about it. There are so many ways...