If we can’t afford oil...

Andrew Kenny debunks the myth that nuclear power is inherently dangerous or bad for the environment – and hails a surge of new nuclear construction around the world

According to World Energy Outlook 2007, ‘reasonably assured’ reserves of uranium will keep us going for another 115 years at present consumption. However this is hardly scratching the surface. Uranium is an abundant element in the Earth’s crust, but because prices have been so low until recently, at around $10/lb in 2001, miners have put little effort into prospecting for it. With nuclear back in fashion, prices rose to over $130/lb in 2007, in large part from speculation, but have since dropped to $60/lb. Huge extra conventional reserves will be found once we start looking. Beyond those are gigantic unconventional reserves. The sea contains about three parts per billion of uranium. The Japanese have already demonstrated that it can be extracted at prices probably around $150/lb. If you extract uranium from the sea, it will be replenished by rivers, making it for practical purposes ‘renewable’. Fast breeder reactors, whose basic technology has already been proven, can multiply uranium reserves fiftyfold – not by defying the laws of thermodynamics, but by converting unusable energy into usable. There is twice as much thorium as uranium, and thorium can be converted into a nuclear fuel. Nothing is more sustainable than nuclear power.

The costs of nuclear electricity are competitive around the world and in many countries it is the cheapest source of electricity. According to the International Energy Agency in 2005, projected worldwide costs of electricity, in dollars per megawatt-hour, are roughly as follows. Hydro: 65. Gas: 40. Coal: 35. Nuclear: 30. Capital costs of building nuclear power plants are rather higher than coal and considerably higher than gas, but fuel costs are lower than coal and much lower than gas, and fuel costs will be much more stable. According to a study by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004, the costs of electricity in the UK from nuclear would be cheaper than everything else except gas – but that was before the gas price shot up. In the USA, the production costs, which exclude capital costs, of nuclear power are the lowest of all (see graph, right).

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Herbert Thornton

September 24th, 2008 1:24am Report this comment

What a pleasure it is to read common sense about nuclear power. The faster this resource is expanded the better and the sooner we will be rid both of the pollution caused by petrol powered vehicles and other burners of oil products - not to mention our consumption of oil being the source of huge funding for people like Osama bin Laden and their bloodthirsty, medieval ambitions.

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