Ann: Drilling Continues with High Grade Vanadium , page-8

re: Ann: Drilling Continues with High Grade V... I am not sure vanadium batteries offer a serious solution to base load requirements. The sheer size of energy demands of a steel smelting operation seem well beyond battery storage for some decades and let’s not go near an aluminium smelter’s needs. These kinds of demands are those that have to be met, not a modest size community’s domestic demand, before an energy supply can be taken seriously. Base load electricity generation has to come from fossils or nuclear and if China is a guide, by 2030 the contribution from wind and other renewables will be making up less than 5%. The base load will still come from coal and nuclear, contributing 80%. Coal’s percentage falls from today’s 79% to 75%, with nuclear stepping in.
As much as I admire Dick, I have to challenge his assertion about “huge disasters” in the nuclear industry and I am talking Worldwide.
Randoi posted a long piece on 1st August in which he questioned the hyperbole surrounding nuclear risks versus those of burning coal. I have to admit I did some checking and could not find any serious errors. If I may summarise, the direct deaths due to nuclear ‘disasters’ pale into insignificance when compared to coal; basically 100,000s of deaths due to coal for Each death due to nuclear accident. Randoi did not consider oil, which while better than coal is still staggeringly worse than nuclear. That being the case Dick Smith may have been a little ‘out’ in his use of “huge disasters”, when long term and ongoing disasters are being caused by the fossils.
Seth Godin confirms this adding, that while deaths per unit of power is quantifiable, the damage due to CO2 has not been factored in. Nuclear adds Zero CO2 to the environment.
If I may quote Randoi, he included the following:
“The United Nations estimates 1.3 million premature deaths occur EVERY year due to outdoor air pollution. Burning coal is the major contributor to air pollution.” And later “…the nuclear industry WORLD WIDE has resulted in a TOTAL of 216 direct deaths since 1945, Yep, 1945. An average of less than 3.4 per year” and the kicker; comparing nuclear accidents to common industrial deaths, which hardly raise a murmur “…according to Safe Work Australia, about 200 industrial deaths occur each year. In 2012 the total was 212.” That is, compared to an average of just 3.4 deaths per year in the nuclear industry.
When it comes to safety, the fossils can never get close to nuclear, regardless of how it is sliced and diced.
While vanadium will be a major part of the energy storage solutions and the demand for both battery applications and from the steel industry will seriously rise in the next decade, it must be only a minor player in energy storage. If it were otherwise, that is, a technical solution was in the wings, the Patents would be there, along with a stampede of IPOs.
Regardless, SHE looks to be on a double winner, with two big pluses. SHE has commercial uranium and vanadium. Then the first additional plus, currently there are only three major producers of vanadium, China, Russia and South Africa, with both supply and demand tightening.
Second; the metallurgy of the vanadium resource SHE has in Korea appears to be far more amenable to extraction. The trial plant, running a low cost solution, has extracted from 60% to over 90%, with management saying it believes 90% can be consistently achieved. That is,no vanadium chemical engineering nightmares involving ore roasting and vexing recalcitrant metallurgy.