Uranium Supply and the Nuclear Option
Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations and Research,
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN.Tel./fax 01295 261864. Email meir@fraw.org.uk.
© Paul Mobbs, March 2005. Released under the Gnu Free Documentation License.
Published in Oxford Energy Forum, the quarterly journal of the
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies,Issue 61, May 2005.
(see http://www.oxfordenergy.org/ for details of the OIES).
Introduction
The nuclear industry have
traditionally argued that nuclear energy is a reliable source of energy in the
longer term [WNA 2003], but for how long? There are many technical issues,
related to the choice of reactor and the operation of the fuel cycle, which
affect the longevity of the uranium resource. Potentially these choices could
limit the viability of the uranium resource to a few decades.
To decide how valid an option
nuclear energy is we must understand the limitations on the availability of
uranium, and the current state of reactor technology. There are many
uncertainties about how the nuclear industry might develop in the future, but
it is possible to conclude that the supply of uranium, at a level that could
support largescale power generation, might only be
viable for a matter of decades. Potentially, could a shortage of uranium be the
Achilles-heel of the nuclear industry that, so far, the anti-nuclear lobby have
missed?
Uranium Resources
Uranium is a resource that is
as common as tin or zinc. Some analysts argue that the production processes of
the uranium mining industry, and the nuclear industry's use of uranium, mean
that we should evaluate the supply of uranium in a similar manner to the
evaluation of metal resources [MacDonald 2003]. It is the quality, not the
quantity, of the resource that we must concentrate upon.
According to the 'Red Book'
[NEA 2004], the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency's statistical study of world uranium
resources and demand, in 2002 the world consumed 67,000 tonnes of uranium. Only
36,000 tonnes of this was produced from primary sources. The balance came from
a variety of secondary sources, in particular the ex-military inventory of
uranium which is being released as nuclear weapons systems are run down.
The availability of cheap
uranium from the military has been one of the contributing factors to the
shrinkage of capacity within the uranium mining sector over the last decade
[Combs 2004]. It also entails that at some point between 2010 and 2020 the uranium mining
industry must dramatically expand to meet future demand [Bertel 2002].
Estimating the available reserves of uranium is a little difficult as various
agencies interpret the availability of uranium resources using different
methodologies. If we add together all potential sources of uranium, including
'unconventional' sources such as sea water, the amount of uranium that is
accessible around the globe is in excess of 17 million tonnes
[Price, 2002]. Most estimates, which consider known reserves and reasonable
estimates of other high grade sources of uranium ore, put the figure at around
4 to 5 million tonnes. Some authorities take a more sceptical view. For example
the European Commission's Green Paper on Energy [EC 2001] discounts speculative
sources and quotes only the known uranium resource (2 to 3 million tonnes).
Generally uranium reserves are
classified according to the cost of recovery as a dollar value. Clearly this is
an imprecise measure given that it does not reflect the net value of the energy
produced from uranium less the energy used in its mining and processing and in the
generation of power. Below a certain concentration the recovery of uranium will take more energy than it
produces. The most productive uranium ores contain 1,000 to 20,000 parts per million of uranium (ppmU) [WNA
2004]. Other potential sources, such as igneous rocks, have concentrations of uranium of around 4ppmU. Sea
water, also quoted as a future source of uranium, has an average uranium content of 0.003ppmU. In the 1970s
Peter Chapman [Chapman 1975] calculated the cut-off value, at which the energy
used to extract uranium from the ore exceeds the energy produced from the
nuclear plant, at around 20ppmU. Even with advances in processing and reactor
design this is unlikely to fall far below 10ppmU. This puts a limitation on the
theoretical size of the uranium resource because a number of the potential
sources fall below this level.
Fuel Cycles and Uranium Consumption
The world's nuclear capacity
is based upon 'thermal' fission reactors that split uranium atoms and produce
heat. The problem with this type of reactor is that it can only split atoms of
one isotope of uranium - uranium-235
(235U).
As 235U only constitutes around 0.7% of the uranium
resource, the amount of energy that nuclear energy systems can generate, using
current technologies, is very limited. The bulk of the uranium resource, made
up of the isotope uranium-238 (238U),
does not take part directly in nuclear fission. However some of the (238U)
is converted to plutonium-239 (239Pu)
whilst inside the reactor and this is also fissioned to produce additional energy.
The only way it is possible to use the majority of the uranium resource is to adopt a
different reactor technology . the 'fast breeder' or 'fast' reactor. This
exploits the conversion of 238U into 239Pu
by 'fast' neutrons in
order to produce 239Pu, and following
reprocessing of the nuclear fuel the 239Pu can be substituted for the
235U for future energy production.
The primary difference
between the thermal reactor system and the fast breeder reactor system is the
way that the nuclear fuel cycle operates. Thermal reactors operate a 'once
through' cycle. Nuclear fuel is used to generate energy and then it is put into
indefinite storage. Some nuclear fuel is reprocessed in order to recover the
plutonium, but at the moment the recycling of plutonium back into the fuel
cycle operates at a minimal level through the production of
'mixed oxide' (or MOX) fuel. Switching to a system where fast reactors are used
more widely, in order to operate a more 'closed' cycle, would allow a greater proportion
of the uranium resource to be utilised. However, it would also require that the
world's nuclear reprocessing capacity were dramatically increased as the closed
cycle cannot operate without these reprocessing facilities. The requirement to
significantly expand fuel
reprocessing, far beyond the world's current capacity, also brings with it
unknown factors in relation to the consequential increases in releases of
persistent and bioaccumulative radioactivity into the environment.
In 2003, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology produced a detailed study of the future of nuclear
power [MIT 2003]. This provides a wealth of data on the various types of
nuclear fuel cycle that might operate in the future, and how much uranium these
different fuel cycles consume. On the MIT analysis, the effect of switching
from a 'once through' to a 'closed'
cycle (where a mixture of thermal and fast reactors are used and the plutonium
is recycled through fuel reprocessing) is to nearly halve the consumption of
uranium per unit of energy produced.
However, despite the fact
that using fast reactors would reduce uranium consumption, and allow a greater
proportion of the uranium resource to be utilised, no viable commercial design
for a fast reactor has yet been produced. The major fast breeder projects have
been curtailed by technical flaws, principally related to the problems associated with
cooling the core of the fast reactor system. This impasse seems unlikely to
change in the future given that the new (Generation III) reactor designs
currently being tested, and most of the future (Generation IV) reactors that
are being designed, are thermal not fast reactors.
The Lifetime of Uranium Resources
The nuclear industry often
expresses the contribution of nuclear energy in terms of electricity
generation, but it's more realistic to look at its contribution in terms of
global energy supply. This is because, as fossil fuels become scarce [Mobbs,
2004], nuclear energy would have to displace the energy currently supplied by
fossil fuels.
Although nuclear energy
provides 16% of the world's electricity supply [WNA 2005], recent estimates put
the contribution to the world's total energy supply at between 6.1% [BP 2004]
and 6.6% [UNDP 2000]. At the current level of uranium consumption (67,000
tonnes per year) known uranium resources (2.8 million tonnes of uranium) would
last 42 years . a fact highlighted by the European Commission in their Energy
Green Paper [EC 2001]. The known and estimated resources plus secondary
resources (such as the military inventory), a total of around 4.8 million
tonnes, would last 72 years. Of course this assumes that nuclear continues to
provide just a fraction of the world's energy supply. If capacity were
increased six-fold then 72 years would reduce to 12 years. This is because
nuclear energy, in terms of global energy supply, must increase by a factor
of four to eight to make any
significant difference to the use of fossil fuels around the globe.
Consequently the expected lifetime of the uranium resource would fall by a
similar factor.
The actual lifetime of the
uranium resource will depend upon the technologies adopted as part of any
newnuclear capacity. New reactor designs are more thermally efficient (up to
45% to 50% rather than 30% to 35%) which could extend the lifetime of the
uranium resource by a factor of 1.7. Introducing a number of fast breeder
reactors, to increase the efficiency of uranium consumption, might increase the
lifetime of the uranium resource by a factor of 2. Even so, taking these two
factors together alongside a six-fold increase in capacity, the lifetime of the
known and estimated uranium resource would still be less than 50 years.
This stark problem, if one
reads many papers on uranium resources produced by the nuclear industry, is an
issue that is recognised but seldom explored. It was highlighted in OECD
research six years ago, which noted that if the nuclear option were adopted
without a radical change in technology then known uranium supplies would only last 'about a decade' [OECD
1999]. The recent MIT study briefly acknowledges the matter but, perhaps due to
the USA's large indigenous uranium reserves, discards it. Others have
acknowledged the short term problems of capacity in the uranium industry,
especially the problems that might arise if mining capacity does not expand
before the military inventory is exhausted [Del Frari 2001/Connor 2003], but do
not look to the longer-term lifetime of the resource. A very few portray a
wholly unrealistic scenario, that forecasts hundreds or thousands of years of
nuclear energy [Price 2002]. This is because they do not take into account the
need for the nuclear industry to grow massively in order to displace fossil
fuel use, or that a significant part of the globe's entire theoretical supply of
uranium may be unusable (because its extraction and use would take more energy
than it would provide).
Conclusion
To make a significant
contribution to energy supply nuclear energy would have to expand by such a
scale that the lifetime of the uranium resource, along with issues such as the
management of radioactive waste and the control of fissile materials, are
always going to be problematic. Unlike plant safety or the emission of
radioactivity, which can be controlled through better engineering or management,
the basic issue of how much energy can be produced from nuclear sources is
limited by physical laws and the scale of current global energy demand.
There are clear shortcomings
in the current methodology for assessing uranium resources because they are
based entirely on the economic costs of production, not the net energy value of
the resource once the costs of extraction and use are taken into account. This
has important implications, which vary according to the selection of the fuel cycles and reactor
technologies used, on the lifetime of the uranium resource. Until the net
energy value
of the uranium resource, and different fuel cycles, is taken into account we
can have no clear understanding of the
productive future of the nuclear industry. It is also difficult to assess the
environmental implications of the nuclear
option as each technology creates varying environmental impacts.
It would be unwise to
advocate adopting the nuclear option when we have no realistic idea of how long
the uranium resource will last. Clearly the 'once through' cycle has no future
. if the world were to adopt the 'once through' option the world's uranium
resources would be exhausted in a few decades. We would very quickly shift from shortages of oil and
coal to shortages of uranium [Mobbs 2005]. The principle solution to the
problem of the 'once through' cycle, adopting a more 'closed' cycle using fast
breeder reactors, is itself fraught with dangers. There is no tried and tested
fast breeder technology. In addition the scale of the increase in nuclear
capacity required to displace fossil
fuel is such that the lifetime of the resource would still be a matter of
decades, not centuries. For this reason it may be that the longevity of the
uranium resource, quite apart from the issues of waste or radioactivity, could
be more significant to the future viability of the nuclear industry.
References
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