proud to be australian, page-21

Peak uranium is just another greenie luddite lie and scare campaign to stop technological progress and revert us all to a socialist dark ages...

read the entire article at the link


http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/mit-report-disputes-uranium-shortage-fallacy

MIT Report Disputes Uranium Shortage Fallacy
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Fri, 10/22/2010 - 09:02

One of the arguments used by critics of nuclear power is that there is not enough uranium to power a nuclear world for an extended time. The energy hungry world would just be trading looming oil shortages for uranium shortages, they claim. As with most anti-nuclear scare-mongering these charges are totally bogus. MIT has just released a major report on the nuclear fuel cycle that finds uranium supplies will not limit the expansion of nuclear power in the US or around the world for the foreseeable future. It suggests that nuclear power, even using today?s reactor technology with the wasteful once-through fuel cycle, can play a significant part in satisfying the world's future energy needs.

The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) report focuses on what is known as the ?nuclear fuel cycle??a concept that encompasses both the kind of fuel used to power a reactor and what happens to the fuel after it has been used. Currently, most of the world?s reactors run on newly mined uranium that has been enriched, though a few run on plutonium. After the fuel has been used it is either stored on site or disposed of underground?the ?once-through? fuel cycle adopted during the Carter administration. It is possible to reprocess spent fuel, creating new reactor fuel from what would otherwise be waste.

The new study suggests an alternative fuel cycle utilizing an enriched uranium-initiated breeder reactor in which additional natural or depleted uranium is added to the reactor core at the same rate nuclear materials are consumed. This much simpler and more efficient self-sustaining fuel cycle produces no excess nuclear materials. Such reactors can also recover 50 times as much energy per kilogram of mined uranium as a conventional light water reactor. For more on future reactor designs see The Energy Gap.
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