6 ms·

Putting aside any consideration about the safety of running those reactors and disposing of the spent fuel, I wonder about the wisdom of investing in an energy

Putting aside any consideration about the safety of running those reactors and disposing of the spent fuel, I wonder about the wisdom of investing in an energy source which would not decrease West's dependency on authoritarian and openly adversarial states. Kazakhstan + Russia + Uzbekistan + China = about 54% of the world production in 2018. [1] Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are both in Russia's sphere of influence, especially the former one which accounts for 40% of the world production. On the other side, Canada is the number 2 producer (13%) and Australia is estimated to have more reserves than all of the above countries combined. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...

maratc 5y ago
Can other elements, except uranium, be used for power generation? I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product.
- dtx1 5y ago
  > Can other elements, except uranium, be used for power generation Plutonium, Thorium and a few others yes > I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product. It doesn't and it's used mostly because it was easiest to work with and best researched when the majority oft reactors Werke build
  - maratc 5y ago
    But wasn't it "best researched" because of the potential for military use, and all the military R&D money?
    - p_l 5y ago
      No, it was just easiest to get running. You can make natural uranium reactor with no enrichment of fuel needed, even - it's how Manhattan Project could get fissile material in the first place. Thorium was actually more of military-only solution than Uranium->Plutonium chain, as unlike Uranium it doesn't have obvious "easy" energy use path, but early on it was researched as mix of uranium and thorium fuels due to uranium availability concerns.
      - kalnins 5y ago
        It's so easy, it even occurred naturally in past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        Thorium for military kind of sucks. If you want to build a substainable long term program you dont want U-232 around. The only real advantage of Thorium is that you can use it in a thermal breeder. If you are not building a thermal breeder using thorim is mostly pointless.
- dmos62 5y ago
  Yes and yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power The thing holding us back from having thorium reactors seems to be how expensive nuclear reactor research is and how unpopular nuclear reactors are.
  - EricE 5y ago
    China is charging ahead with Thorium - maybe after they embarrass the rest of the world people will get more rational and less emotional about nuclear? Not holding my breath....
XorNot 5y ago
Uranium production doesn't really follow its actual occurrence though - you'll note the places listed are all participants or proxy states of the Cold War arms race. They inherited that production capacity and mining - whereas Australia barely mines at all because it has no nuclear weapons and only 1 research reactor. Basically I'd say there's a lack of evidence that proven reserves only exist in unstable states, but also the refueling cycle changes things dramatically - reactor fuel can be easily and compactly stockpiled, and happens on yearly cycles - much less subject to shifting local geopolitics.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
Then we shouldn’t invest in photovoltaics either, because rare earth elements are also predominantly produced by these countries.
- hkt 5y ago
  Only because the extraction process is dirty and we aren't willing to do it as cheaply. Waste from mining other minerals is rich in REMs, and deposits are plentiful. "Rare" is actually a misnomer: https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/15/are-rare-earth-elements-actually-rare/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/15/are-rare-earth-elements...
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
    So it's pretty much like Uranium then. It's not rare, but we outsource its mining to autocratic regimes, because they're willing to produce it cheaply (while destroying their environment).
    - hkt 5y ago
      Pretty much. Worth shouting out that it is also sourced in former colonies that still have major dependencies on their old imperial masters. Niger/France have this relationship and Niger produces the majority of uranium used by the French nuclear industry.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Photovoltaics do not, in fact, depend on rare-earth elements. Wind turbine generators often, but far from always, depend on rare-earth magnets. Batteries often (but far from always) depend on other rare, but not rare-earth, elements like cobalt.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    Also, the term rare-earth metal is really unfortunate. About half of them have no practical industrial use. The other half is neither rare, nor particularly expensive The three most important rare earth elements are lanthanum, neodymium and praseodymium. The first two are about as "rare" as copper or nickel. Praseodymium is less abundant, about the rate of lithium or lead. Neodymium costs around $50 per kilo. About 3 kilos is necessary in an electric car. One container full of neodymium ingots is enough for 30,000 electric cars. It's not a geopolitical ace up the sleeve it's made out to be
hugh-avherald 5y ago
The countries with large uranium reserves are basically just 'big countries'. And the nature of nuclear power is such that the cost of fuel is not as important as it is for fossil fuels. Even if it were, as you point out, Australia is the Saudi Arabia of uranium reserves. I'd say they're about as far away from adversarial as you could get.
- louthy 5y ago
  > I'd say they're about as far away from adversarial as you could get. Have you seen them play cricket?
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  Also as far away as you could get geographically, though I suppose this is far less of an issue that it would have been in the past. I wonder if nuclear-powered ships could be utilised to deliver the uranium, further cutting the climate impact?
  - pharke 5y ago
    If Australia were to refine the uranium for export you wouldn't need anything special in the ways of shipping other than good containment and careful handling. If you replaced all power generation with nuclear that alone would drastically reduce the amount of shipping necessary for oil, gas and coal to a point where you would hardly need to be concerned about it. There's even a relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1162/ https://xkcd.com/1162/
PaywallBuster 5y ago
the newer tech (e.g. Gen4 reactors) also have the benefit of reusing the existing radioactive waste rods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantages_and_disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantag... so you wouldn't have to mine that much new uranium (or be that dependent on that)
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The problem is that Gen4 reactors are essentially vaporware, with the expected first reactors to come online in 2040-2050 - and given the desaster that has been the (third gen) EPR regarding timing and budget, I believe it's foolish to rely on that date. Especially since a lot of focus is on molten-salt reactors and to this date no one has come close to solving the problem that molten salt is highly aggressive towards pipes. We need solutions now, and we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage.
  - turbinerneiter 5y ago
    > We need solutions now, and we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage. This is the one thing I like about Tesla and SpaceX: they solve problems with today's tech. When I imagined reusable spacecraft, I was dreaming about anti-gravity drives, which just furthered my believe of it being impossible. SpaceX did it on a kerosene rocket, same physics that the Saturn V used decades ago. We don't need to wait for some Sci-Fi physics to solve this issue. We can go really far with we already have today.
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    > we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage. I always hear that abstract argument but do we have the math right on this? What would it take to provide enough power in the US with only those solutions (+ hydro and other non nuclear non fossil fuel solutions)? Do we have an idea of the amount of material and pollution that would be generated by building (and then recycling) all those panels and batteries? I would like to live in a world where we don't need nuclear but I am not convinced we can realistically do without (assuming the same standard of living).
jonkoops 5y ago
A better reactor design could allow more commonly available radioactive (but non-fissile) elements such as Thorium to be bred into fissile elements such as Uranium-233. This kind of reactor is called a Breeder reactor [1], for example the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...
- p_l 5y ago
  Another mostly forgotten aspect is that there are designs that explicitly work without enrichment, so no lengthy and limiting process of enrichment necessary (now, postprocessing the waste to separate materials to mix into new fuel, that would be useful)
dmos62 5y ago
> disposing of the spent fuel This keeps coming up, but far as I can tell spent fuel disposal is not, and has never been a substantial issue. It's above all an engineering and administrative challenge and is safe when done properly. Also, spent fuel can be reused, and as technology improves, we'll be able to reuse more and more of it. Accidents have happened where disposal was improper, but that's rare and consequences are not dire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Accidents Radioctivity accidents can at most make places uninhabitable, but they won't contribute to the greenhouse effect (which might ultimately lead to a major socioeconomic collapse), or cause petrol-oligarchies (which have led, and will lead to war, and might lead to a thermonuclear war too). In my eyes, burning mineral fuels is much, much worse than risking radioactivity accidents. Trivia: in Italy there was a lot of illegal dumping going on during 1980s and 1990s, they even secretely transported nuclear waste to Somalia for illegal burying and have sunk a number of ships carrying nuclear waste (for the purpose of disposal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...
- jacksonkmarley 5y ago
  There is currently still no licensed long term storage site for high-level waste in the world. That is amazing really. I consider that a major issue, even if the barriers are mostly political rather than technical.
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    It's coming close though, Onkalo in Finland is still on track for 2023/2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-store-nuclear-waste-can-it-survive-100000-years https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
  - EricE 5y ago
    That we are still arguing about burying viable fuel, instead of burning it in more modern and safer designs is what really boggles my mind. "Here's a nice loaf of bread. Let's bury it in a mountain!" Utter madness.
akvadrako 5y ago
I don't get your point. As you say, uranium is common. And you don't need a lot of it. So the solution is obvious: extract it domestically or buy from friendly countries.
pharke 5y ago
Australia could be producing a lot more Uranium, it has an estimated 30% of world reserves and if you sort the list in the Wikipedia article about reserves by Reserves as of 2015, it's at the top. Canada also has large reserves and is 3rd in that list. There is also South Africa and Brazil along with other African and South American countries that could contribute to supply. I don't think supply of uranium ore would be a problem for the West. As for safety, nuclear power production is probably one of the safest industries that exist since we are so acutely aware of the consequences. Waste storage is only a hot button issue because of trumped up fears. Compared to the variety of toxins we release into the air, the amount of nuclear waste produced is tiny and easy to contain. I'd rather all of the life threatening by products of power production be safely buried under a mountain hundreds of miles away from anyone than just dumped into the atmosphere all around the globe.
panick21_ 5y ago
Switching to modern reactors you will be able to continually run them without U-235. Thorium os fertil and you can have a thermal breeder. There are other methods of doing the same with Uranium. Every country has plenty of Thorium. And even so you can stockpile these fuels for years in advance.

maratc 5y ago

Can other elements, except uranium, be used for power generation? I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product.

dtx1 5y ago
> Can other elements, except uranium, be used for power generation Plutonium, Thorium and a few others yes > I thought uranium is used in reactors because it also produces A-bomb material as a by-product. It doesn't and it's used mostly because it was easiest to work with and best researched when the majority oft reactors Werke build
- maratc 5y ago
  But wasn't it "best researched" because of the potential for military use, and all the military R&D money?
  - p_l 5y ago
    No, it was just easiest to get running. You can make natural uranium reactor with no enrichment of fuel needed, even - it's how Manhattan Project could get fissile material in the first place. Thorium was actually more of military-only solution than Uranium->Plutonium chain, as unlike Uranium it doesn't have obvious "easy" energy use path, but early on it was researched as mix of uranium and thorium fuels due to uranium availability concerns.
    - kalnins 5y ago
      It's so easy, it even occurred naturally in past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      Thorium for military kind of sucks. If you want to build a substainable long term program you dont want U-232 around. The only real advantage of Thorium is that you can use it in a thermal breeder. If you are not building a thermal breeder using thorim is mostly pointless.
dmos62 5y ago
Yes and yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power The thing holding us back from having thorium reactors seems to be how expensive nuclear reactor research is and how unpopular nuclear reactors are.
- EricE 5y ago
  China is charging ahead with Thorium - maybe after they embarrass the rest of the world people will get more rational and less emotional about nuclear? Not holding my breath....

XorNot 5y ago

Uranium production doesn't really follow its actual occurrence though - you'll note the places listed are all participants or proxy states of the Cold War arms race. They inherited that production capacity and mining - whereas Australia barely mines at all because it has no nuclear weapons and only 1 research reactor. Basically I'd say there's a lack of evidence that proven reserves only exist in unstable states, but also the refueling cycle changes things dramatically - reactor fuel can be easily and compactly stockpiled, and happens on yearly cycles - much less subject to shifting local geopolitics.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

Then we shouldn’t invest in photovoltaics either, because rare earth elements are also predominantly produced by these countries.

hkt 5y ago
Only because the extraction process is dirty and we aren't willing to do it as cheaply. Waste from mining other minerals is rich in REMs, and deposits are plentiful. "Rare" is actually a misnomer: https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/15/are-rare-earth-elements-actually-rare/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/15/are-rare-earth-elements...
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  So it's pretty much like Uranium then. It's not rare, but we outsource its mining to autocratic regimes, because they're willing to produce it cheaply (while destroying their environment).
  - hkt 5y ago
    Pretty much. Worth shouting out that it is also sourced in former colonies that still have major dependencies on their old imperial masters. Niger/France have this relationship and Niger produces the majority of uranium used by the French nuclear industry.
ncmncm 5y ago
Photovoltaics do not, in fact, depend on rare-earth elements. Wind turbine generators often, but far from always, depend on rare-earth magnets. Batteries often (but far from always) depend on other rare, but not rare-earth, elements like cobalt.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  Also, the term rare-earth metal is really unfortunate. About half of them have no practical industrial use. The other half is neither rare, nor particularly expensive The three most important rare earth elements are lanthanum, neodymium and praseodymium. The first two are about as "rare" as copper or nickel. Praseodymium is less abundant, about the rate of lithium or lead. Neodymium costs around $50 per kilo. About 3 kilos is necessary in an electric car. One container full of neodymium ingots is enough for 30,000 electric cars. It's not a geopolitical ace up the sleeve it's made out to be

hugh-avherald 5y ago

The countries with large uranium reserves are basically just 'big countries'. And the nature of nuclear power is such that the cost of fuel is not as important as it is for fossil fuels. Even if it were, as you point out, Australia is the Saudi Arabia of uranium reserves. I'd say they're about as far away from adversarial as you could get.

louthy 5y ago
> I'd say they're about as far away from adversarial as you could get. Have you seen them play cricket?
BoxOfRain 5y ago
Also as far away as you could get geographically, though I suppose this is far less of an issue that it would have been in the past. I wonder if nuclear-powered ships could be utilised to deliver the uranium, further cutting the climate impact?
- pharke 5y ago
  If Australia were to refine the uranium for export you wouldn't need anything special in the ways of shipping other than good containment and careful handling. If you replaced all power generation with nuclear that alone would drastically reduce the amount of shipping necessary for oil, gas and coal to a point where you would hardly need to be concerned about it. There's even a relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1162/ https://xkcd.com/1162/

PaywallBuster 5y ago

the newer tech (e.g. Gen4 reactors) also have the benefit of reusing the existing radioactive waste rods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantages_and_disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantag... so you wouldn't have to mine that much new uranium (or be that dependent on that)

mschuster91 5y ago
The problem is that Gen4 reactors are essentially vaporware, with the expected first reactors to come online in 2040-2050 - and given the desaster that has been the (third gen) EPR regarding timing and budget, I believe it's foolish to rely on that date. Especially since a lot of focus is on molten-salt reactors and to this date no one has come close to solving the problem that molten salt is highly aggressive towards pipes. We need solutions now, and we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage.
- turbinerneiter 5y ago
  > We need solutions now, and we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage. This is the one thing I like about Tesla and SpaceX: they solve problems with today's tech. When I imagined reusable spacecraft, I was dreaming about anti-gravity drives, which just furthered my believe of it being impossible. SpaceX did it on a kerosene rocket, same physics that the Saturn V used decades ago. We don't need to wait for some Sci-Fi physics to solve this issue. We can go really far with we already have today.
- skywal_l 5y ago
  > we already have them in mass production: solar panels, wind power generation and battery storage. I always hear that abstract argument but do we have the math right on this? What would it take to provide enough power in the US with only those solutions (+ hydro and other non nuclear non fossil fuel solutions)? Do we have an idea of the amount of material and pollution that would be generated by building (and then recycling) all those panels and batteries? I would like to live in a world where we don't need nuclear but I am not convinced we can realistically do without (assuming the same standard of living).

jonkoops 5y ago

A better reactor design could allow more commonly available radioactive (but non-fissile) elements such as Thorium to be bred into fissile elements such as Uranium-233. This kind of reactor is called a Breeder reactor [1], for example the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...

p_l 5y ago
Another mostly forgotten aspect is that there are designs that explicitly work without enrichment, so no lengthy and limiting process of enrichment necessary (now, postprocessing the waste to separate materials to mix into new fuel, that would be useful)

dmos62 5y ago

> disposing of the spent fuel This keeps coming up, but far as I can tell spent fuel disposal is not, and has never been a substantial issue. It's above all an engineering and administrative challenge and is safe when done properly. Also, spent fuel can be reused, and as technology improves, we'll be able to reuse more and more of it. Accidents have happened where disposal was improper, but that's rare and consequences are not dire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Accidents Radioctivity accidents can at most make places uninhabitable, but they won't contribute to the greenhouse effect (which might ultimately lead to a major socioeconomic collapse), or cause petrol-oligarchies (which have led, and will lead to war, and might lead to a thermonuclear war too). In my eyes, burning mineral fuels is much, much worse than risking radioactivity accidents. Trivia: in Italy there was a lot of illegal dumping going on during 1980s and 1990s, they even secretely transported nuclear waste to Somalia for illegal burying and have sunk a number of ships carrying nuclear waste (for the purpose of disposal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...

jacksonkmarley 5y ago
There is currently still no licensed long term storage site for high-level waste in the world. That is amazing really. I consider that a major issue, even if the barriers are mostly political rather than technical.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  It's coming close though, Onkalo in Finland is still on track for 2023/2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-store-nuclear-waste-can-it-survive-100000-years https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
- EricE 5y ago
  That we are still arguing about burying viable fuel, instead of burning it in more modern and safer designs is what really boggles my mind. "Here's a nice loaf of bread. Let's bury it in a mountain!" Utter madness.

akvadrako 5y ago

I don't get your point. As you say, uranium is common. And you don't need a lot of it. So the solution is obvious: extract it domestically or buy from friendly countries.

pharke 5y ago

Australia could be producing a lot more Uranium, it has an estimated 30% of world reserves and if you sort the list in the Wikipedia article about reserves by Reserves as of 2015, it's at the top. Canada also has large reserves and is 3rd in that list. There is also South Africa and Brazil along with other African and South American countries that could contribute to supply. I don't think supply of uranium ore would be a problem for the West. As for safety, nuclear power production is probably one of the safest industries that exist since we are so acutely aware of the consequences. Waste storage is only a hot button issue because of trumped up fears. Compared to the variety of toxins we release into the air, the amount of nuclear waste produced is tiny and easy to contain. I'd rather all of the life threatening by products of power production be safely buried under a mountain hundreds of miles away from anyone than just dumped into the atmosphere all around the globe.

panick21_ 5y ago

Switching to modern reactors you will be able to continually run them without U-235. Thorium os fertil and you can have a thermal breeder. There are other methods of doing the same with Uranium. Every country has plenty of Thorium. And even so you can stockpile these fuels for years in advance.