Uranium Supply Questions

Uranium Supply Questions

Finding Fuel for an Expanded Fleet

By Paul Wenske

Sen. John McCain, the Republican
Party candidate for U.S. president, in June called
for the construction of 45 new nuclear plants by 2030.
The bold statement cheered an industry experiencing
a renaissance of interest in the wake of growing
concerns for rising energy costs and global warming.

Yet, the optimistic goal is rife with uncertainties,
not the least of which is whether enough uranium
is available to fuel that many plants. It’s a question
vexing some energy experts.

After all, the world presently consumes
160 million pounds of uranium
fuel per year but only produces 100
million pounds. The gap, up to now,
has been supplied by stored inventories
of earlier mined uranium and
decommissioned, diluted warheads.

“We have a 60-million-pound
gap in the supply,” notes Samuel B.
Romberger, a geological engineer at
the Colorado School of Mines. “We
can’t even meet our needs now from
primary production,” he says.

It’s not that Romberger and other
experts who question the goal’s reality
are nuclear critics. But they say reaching
McCain’s goal may not be easy.

“It’s a major issue that’s not been
discussed enough,” Romberger says.

Industry insiders acknowledge the
challenge. But they compare it to the
chicken-and-egg analogy. The industry
has been in limbo for 30 years. No new nuclear plants
meant low demand for fuel. Uranium’s price fell to $15
a pound, hardly enough to spur full-bore exploration.

Since the lowest price was reached, rekindled
interest, the promise of loan guarantees and a flurry
of new plant applications caused uranium’s price
to shoot up last year to more than $130 a pound
before settling back to $64 a pound this year. The
incentive of higher prices spurred exploration.

“We believe there is sufficient fuel,” says Adrian
Heymer, senior director of power plant deployment
for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade
group. “The fuel issue was masked by the fact that
there hasn’t been much mining of uranium until
recently. Now it’s at $64 a pound. That puts a different
number on the economics.”

Heymer says that achieving construction of a first
wave of plants built on budget and on time would
inspire confidence in the licensing process that then
could spur a second wave, prompting more demand
and exploration. “You are going to see the demand/
supply equation begin to balance out,” he says.

The United States currently has 104 nuclear
plants. Official estimates anticipate 34 applications
for new construction will be filed by 2010. McCain’s
goal is partly based on a belief that adding another
11 plants over 20 years is not that much of a stretch.
“It is feasible and can be done,” Heymer says. “And
like anything else, success breeds success.”

Despite renewed exploration within its borders, the
United States remains a lesser player, last year producing
4.5 million pounds and purchasing 47 million pounds
from other countries. Top producers are Canada,
Australia and Kazakhstan, whose higher-grade oreis
also easier and more rewarding to mine.

But high-quality ore is limited even in these countries,
leading critics to argue there is only enough

Senator John McCain

Source: AP/ PHIL MCCARTEN

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high-grade ore to supply present needs for 40 or 50
years, not the 100 or more the industry touts.

Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation
Foundation writes that at the current rate of use,
high-grade ores “will last about 50 years.” He further
contends that if the number of nuclear plants were
expanded to replace all coal-fired plants, resources
“would only last about a decade or so.”

He also maintains that extracting and processing
lower-grade ores will, in the end, require expending
more conventional sources of energy and result in
more greenhouse pollution.

Fellow Aussie Martin Sevior, a physics professor
at the University of Melbourne, disagrees. He says
exploration has already put a positive spin on the
numbers. As a result, “world uranium reserves in the
commercially proved category have increased by 66
percent since 2003,” he says.

“From a bigger perspective, uranium is not a particularly
rare mineral in the Earth’s crust,” Sevior continues.
“It is approximately as common as tin, which
has been mined by humans for over 5,000 years and
is currently produced at the rate of 300,000 tons per
year,” he says, adding, “It is very likely the market will
be supplied adequately in the near term.”

Another way proponents hope to expand the
supply of uranium is by recycling it. Plants in
France, a country that relies on nuclear power for
77 percent of its energy, are already using recycled
fuel. French-owned Areva NP operates a plant in
La Hague that recycles spent fuel for a number
of nations that besides France includes Japan,
Germany and Belgium.

The plant extracts reusable uranium. Areva says it
recaptures 96 percent of the spent fuel, which also
means less waste that has to be stored. “We could
do that for almost any nuclear power plant in the
United States now,” says Andrew Cook, Areva NP
senior vice president of sales and marketing.

The process, however, has been criticized by
environmentalists and is not approved in the United
States. Recycling requires building a special plant and
the process is expensive. Most experts say recycling
is decades off in the United States, mainly because of
the cost. But if the price of and demand for fuel grows,
recycling may begin to look more attractive.

Areva is supporting a small U.S. demonstration
project in partnership with the Department of Energy.

“The question now is what is most efficient and
what is most economical,” says Eileen M. Supko,
senior consultant for Energy Resources International.
“There are a lot of questions on how to move forward
on recycling. We’d need new regulations put in place.”

In the end, the biggest obstacle to meeting
McCain’s goal by 2030 is the availability of the
heavy forgings, vessels and components to make
the plants themselves. If the plants aren’t built,
demand and exploration for fuel will fall back into the
doldrums.

Thirty years without building a new plant has
essentially cost the nation its “fabrication infrastructure,”
says Paul J. Turinsky, professor of nuclear
engineering at North Carolina State University.

“When you say we can build 45 plants, that’s the
thing I’m worried about. It’s going to be pushing it.
We aren’t going to break ground at the earliest until
the end of this decade,” he says.

Currently the only manufacturing plant capable
of building a reactor vessel for the new plants is in
Japan. Utilities in the United States are waiting for
components in a long line with contemporaries from
other countries. China alone plans to build 30 new
plants. So it’s not too surprising that the estimated
cost of a new plant is rising as high as $12 billion.

Cost overruns and delayed starts helped cripple
nuclear power last time around. It didn’t help that
vendors came up with a variety of designs that
stymied uniformity in the licensing process.

Now, experts say, the focus is on the licensing
process. If new plants can be completed on budget
and on time, confidence is assured, says Erich
Schneider, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering
at the University of Texas at Austin. “If it takes
11 years, forget it, that first plant will be the last one.”

Still, in the end, meeting a goal of 45 new plants
by 2030 may be less important than fitting nuclear
power into a reliable, long-term energy policy along
with other alternative sources, including wind and
solar power, says Romberger of the Colorado
School of Mines.

The best way to win over the public, he says, is
to ensure access to affordable energy and address
the threat of global warming. “That’s the strongest
argument to the average person,” he says.