Only 25 years of uranium left, eh? And the amount now being spent to extract it is less than US$5 billion a year. About five US dollars per year per OECD resident.

There is 4 billion tonnes of uranium in the sea; the whole world's land-based industry, for its annual almost-five-billion-dollars, extracts 0.00004 billion tonnes.

The most virulently antinuclear five percent of those billion OECD residents could take the initiative: for less than US$200 a year each, they could outbid nuclear fuel makers and BUY IT ALL. They could dump it all in the sea. Some nuclear electric companies have a few years' worth on hand, but when that was gone, bye-bye nuclear.

The only difficulty is that no-one believes miners, given an unflagging price in this way, would stop supplying ever-larger amounts of uranium for many centuries or millennia ...

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion without exhaust gas:
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html

Hi there
I had a long look at the boron I must say it looks like something that could work Is there any other work done on it I would appreciate any information links etc
Just to throw a twist in here clik on the link below and have a read of this There is also a website that is filled with scientific research on the same subject Have we been led as well as bled with this "fossil" theory as against an "abiotic" origin of fuel as is proposed by these fellows There are some compeling arguments put up The question in my mind is why have we not heard anything about this?
here are the links: http://www.csun.edu/%7Evcgeo005/Energy.html
Go to the scientific papers first http://www.gasresources.net/
Cheers
Christo

Response by Mark Diesendorf

It’s unfortunate that some of the postings take advantage of their anonymity to be rude, a cowardly act, since the authors of the articles sign their own names. There would be a better debate if OnLineOpinion required all correspondents to give their real names and email addresses. Anyway, here I’ll address nuclear economics.

The nuclear industry correspondents use the relatively low price of electricity in France to support their false claims that nuclear power is cheap. Unfortunately, the French nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries are so closely intertwined, that price of French electricity tells us nothing about the cost of nuclear power. We really have to examine electricity economics in countries with nuclear power that have transparently restructured their electricity industries to create a competitive market.

When this was done in the UK, no-one wanted to buy the nuclear power stations, and so the British Government had to make huge subsidy payments, as mentioned in my article. To these must be added the estimated cost of decommissioning existing nuclear power stations that has recently been increased to 70 billion pounds sterling by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (which is hardly a radical greenie group).

In the USA no-one has invested in a new nuclear power station since the 1970s, despite cumulative subsidies to the industry of about US$100 billion. Enough said!

One correspondent objects to my choice of discount (real interest) rate of 10% per annum. Right now the discount rate for buying a new power station in the UK is actually 11%. Just try to borrow money to build a new power station for less than 10% real! Don’t forget the financial risk, which is much bigger than for buying a house! The correspondent is also wrong to imagine that a doubling of the price of oil is relevant to nuclear economics. Oil is for transport and nuclear power produces electricity. However, a large increase in gas prices will assist coal, wind and (provided it can compete) nuclear.

Response (continued) by Mark Diesendorf

One correspondent claims that “32 countries have found nuclear power economic”. However, nukes have often been installed for other reasons than economics, notably nuclear weapons proliferation and security/diversity of electricity supply, especially in countries that have low fossil fuel resources, such as Japan.

The claim that the containment vessel can withstand a direct hit from a fully fuelled jumbo jet, is wishful thinking that has never been tested. Anyway, an easier way for terrorists to release vast quantities of high-level radiation, is to send in a small paramilitary force to set off explosives inside the containment vessel.

It is incorrect for the nuclear industry to claim that that the work of Van Leeuwen & Smith (VLS), on CO2 emissions from the nuclear fuel chain, has been refuted. Contradiction is not the same as refutation. There is no doubt that, when uranium ore grade decreases by a factor of 10, the fossil energy required to mine and mill it will increase by at least a factor of 10. No-one has even contradicted this. There is also little doubt that reserves of high-grade uranium are very limited. However, there is debate, so far unresolved, about what is the uranium ore density where the total CO2 emissions from mining, milling, enrichment, construction, decommissioning and waste management become equal to that from a combined cycle gas-fired power station (which incidentally has about half the emissions of an equivalent coal-fired power station).

A wind turbine generates the energy required to build itself (including concrete, steel, etc) in 3-7 months of operation. All studies (except for the unpublished one from Vattenfall cited by nuclear proponents) find that the energy required to compensate for the construction of a nuke takes several years of its operation. To this we have to add the energy inputs, and associated CO2 emissions, from the other steps in the nuclear fuel chain.

In Austria and Finland about 12% and 15% respectively of electricity is generated from biomass. In Denmark, 20% of electricity is generated from wind and 12% from biomass.

Mark,
I think it has all been said, I agree with all sustainable, enviromentally friendly options, be it wind, solar, hydro etc. Anything that reduces our reliance on oil, both from an economic point of view, and an enviromental one. We must and should have done so years ago, produce energy of a non oil type, one simply to reduce demand for oil, and hence the price, and two the technology exists, it may need some R & D the federal government has a string of surpluses as long as your arm, and have failed to invest in same, prefering instead to beat the hard working, ordinary people over the head with AWA's.

Mark Diesendorf

The question of the economics of nuclear power is currently under investigation by a committee chaired by Dr. Switkowski. I believe we should wait for that committee to report before commenting further. I do not know if you will be making a submission to the panel. If that is the case then it will be of interest to see if your arguments hold up. I would guess however that the panel will concentrate on the economics of the proposed new generation reactors. The treatment and cost of old and outdated designs is of course of importance to the UK. However, it is arguable, that is of no relevance to either a possible Australian nuclear industry or the possible expansion in uranium mining.

Regarding the question of strength of containment structures; would any demonstration less then a jet engine hitting a vessel along a normal path provide the necessary proof? Since a “real life” demonstration would have to be an unethical experiment, you will have to accept modelling. Worse still from your point of view, the modelling can only be performed by the industry. Further, it is the nature of security and anti-terrorist activity for much information to be correctly kept from the public domain.

isurveyor@vianet.net.au