More on Brian Wang's Winning Energy Bet w/ Michael Dittmar

Brian Wang discusses his winning bet with Dittmar for world uranium production in 2009. Dittmar not only lost to Brian, but he lost big in terms of percentage prediction error.

The Oil Drum picked up on Brian's winning bet, and attempted to downplay the meaning of Brian's win. Although The Oil Drum provides some useful articles by experts such as "Heading Out", and helpful links to energy articles in The Drumbeat, the website also often displays a quasi-religious faith in "peak oil" and "peak energy."

Brian provides a counter-point to Gail the Actuary's somewhat slanted piece, on his own blog and in comments at The Oil Drum.

The facts are quite important, since whether or not the world embarks upon "a nuclear renaissance" will have a lot to do with whether the developed world can readily ride out the transition from fossil fuel dependency to more sustainable and clean long-term energies. Energy is the life-blood of a modern civilisation. Access to energy is vital to all societies -- but particularly to advanced societies which are headed up a steep technological curve.

In another posting, Brian looks at the peak oil bet between doomer Matt Simmons and John Tierney at the NYT. Doomers clearly have "doom on the brain", and cannot see the world except through "doom-tinted" lenses.

Peak Uranium? Not Just Yet

Brian Wang recently posted an update on uranium ore production out to 2020. Brian looks at a number of different U - producing nations and mines in answering the question of whether there will be enough Uranium for 2020.

Michael Dittmar has been getting some notice around the internet about a claim that uranium supplies cannot/will not be increased from uranium mines around the world Many people who are using his report do not have time to read through more than the highlights and assume that his work is thorough.


Dittmar is biased. Problems and errors with his four papers have been pointed out to him and he ignores it. Also, his work as a particle physicist is not very good either as he is willing to be scientifically dishonest and misinterpret research papers even when the authors are in the room during his presentation and telling him he is wrong.


...Jordan already had a lot of uranium in phosphate deposits. China National Nuclear Corporation General Manager Kang Rixin expects that the first batch of uranium from Jordanian resources will be transported home in 2010; the total quantity probably will be 700 tons. (Caijing Magazine July 5, 2009). It has been expected that the uranium from Jordan phosphate would scale to 2000 tons per year.


Russia is developing the Elkon mine


Russia is developing the Gornoe mine (600 tons) for 2010-2012.


2009 should have 48,000 tons of production


2010 should have 54,000-56,000 tons of production
another 3000 tons from Kazakhstan, Valencia in Namibia, Full year of Malawi production


The world is going to over 100,000 tons of uranium per year in a business as usual mode before 2020. A lot more than the IAEA/OECD projection seem likely from Kazakhstan and less from Canada until Cigar Lake gets sorted out and depending upon which projects proceed based on uranium prices.


Backstopping regular mining is the large supplies of HEU, LEU in Russia and the US (75,000 ton surplus at the DOE). Another backstop is the depleted uranium.


Eventually prices will go up and some deferred projects like 2300/t per year Midwest mine in Saskatchwan, Canada and full scale up Imouraren in Niger will occur (smaller scale opening likely)

In part 1 of Dittmars uranium doom prediction he offers a bet

For those interested, I am offering a bet that the 2009 and 2010 numbers will not be higher than 45,000 tons and 47,000 tons, respectively.

I am willing to take those bets as stated. I would win and be correct if the 2009 world uranium mining production numbers come out to 45,001 tons or higher and the 2010 production numbers to 47,001 tons or higher.


As indicated, I think 2009 and 2010 should come out much higher even with some delayed projects and the accident at Olympic Dam.


I also predict that Cigar Lake will be producing 4000 tons per year or more before 2020.


Africa and Kazakhstan will be where most of the new uranium production is added leading to 2020. Increases from Canada, Australia, Russia, Jordan and other places as well.


Beyond the highly enriched uranium that Russia is supplying (downblended from decommissioned nuclear bombs or unmade bombs.) The US Department of Energy (DOE) also has 75,000 tons of uranium. Shortfalls in uranium mining from delays can be made up for by nuclear utilities being willing to pay Russia enough or to make arrangements with the DOE. The million tons of depleted Uranium can also be enriched to make several tens of thousand tons of fuel.


 _NextBigFuture

As Brian points out, enriched uranium can be downblended and depleted uranium can be enriched. Underground mines have barely been tapped for Uranium, and even seawater has Uranium that can be extracted for fuels.

The killer of "Peak Uranium" is Thorium, which is not only far more plentiful than Uranium in the Earth's crust, Thorium can also utilise waste fuel from the world's nuclear reactors for the Thorium cycle in LFTRs.

Peak Uranium is in the minds of those who actually want to witness widespread energy starvation, violence, and devastation in the cities of advanced nations. Peak Oil doomers, Peak Uranium doomers, Global Warming doomers -- they are all of the same crop of "bystander chic" incompetents. Raised in a psychologically neotenous environment to lifelong irresponsible adolescence, they cast about for entertainment bloody enough to sate their vacuous mental appetites.

$10 Billion of Virginia Uranium Ore Highlights the Fear of Science by Leftists

The extreme left "environmental" movement is deathly afraid of science and reality-based policy. Leftist faux environmentalists invent fantasies such as climate catastrophe and imminent peak oil in order to funnel the small minds of leftists and left-liberal legislators into defeatist postures and policies. The brouhaha over a $10 billion deposit of uranium ore in Virginia highlights this studied dysfunction.

In Pittsylvania County, just north of the North Carolina border, the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States -- and the seventh largest in the world, according to industry monitor UX Consulting -- sits on land owned by neighbors Henry Bowen and Walter Coles. Large uranium deposits close to the surface are virtually unknown in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. And that may be the problem.

...Messrs. Bowen and Coles, who last year formed a company called Virginia Uranium, are asking the state to determine whether mining uranium really is a hazard and, if not, to lift the ban. But they've run into a brick wall of environmental activists who raise the specter of nuclear contamination and who are determined to prevent scientific studies of the issue.

The Piedmont Environmental Council is one of the leading opponents. It warns of the "enormous quantities of radioactive waste" produced by uranium mining.

Jack Dunavant, head of the Southside Concerned Citizens in nearby Halifax County, is another outspoken critic. He paints a picture of environmental apocalypse. "There will be a dead zone within a 30 mile radius of the mine," he says with a courtly drawl. "Nothing will grow. Animals will die. The radiation genetically alters tissue. Animals will not be able to reproduce. We'll see malformed fetuses."

Yet it is not as if we have no experience with uranium mining, which is in fact relatively harmless. Handled properly, the yellowcake that is extracted is no more hazardous than regular household chemicals (and unlike coal, it won't smolder and combust).

James Kelly, who directed the nuclear engineering program at the University of Virginia for many years, says that fears about uranium mining are wildly overblown. "It's an aesthetic nightmare, but otherwise safe in terms of releasing any significant radioactivity or pollution," he told me. "It would be ugly to look at, but from the perspective of any hazard I wouldn't mind if they mined across the street from me."

The situation is rich with irony as well as uranium. While you can't mine yellowcake, it is perfectly legal in Virginia to process enriched uranium into usable nuclear fuel, which is somewhat dangerous to handle. A subsidiary of the French nuclear giant Areva operates a fuel fabrication facility in Lynchburg 50 miles from Chatham. It has been praised by Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, as a good corporate citizen. The state is also home to four commercial nuclear reactors, which provide Virginians with 35% of their electricity. And, of course, the U.S. Navy operates nuclear ships out of Norfolk, Va.

...Gov. Kaine supports allowing the National Academy of Sciences to determine whether mining could be done safely. So does virtually every elected official in heavily Republican Pittsylvania County. Earlier this year the narrowly Democratic state Senate voted 34-6 to authorize the study. But the measure was killed in committee in the House under pressure from environmental groups. If it was allowed to come up for a vote in the full House, which is controlled by Republicans, opponents concede it would have passed. _WSJ_via_TomNelson_and_GreenWatch

Killed in committee by environmental pressure on leftist and left-liberal legislators? Where have we heard that story before? Oh, yes, the same thing is happening right now in the US Congress. It seems that leftists hate science, hate energy, hate allowing energy issues to be voted upon freely. The only thing leftists and leftist faux environmentalists do not hate, is ruthlessly wielding the reins of power.

You know, lefties, Santa Claus is not the only one who can make a list and check it twice. Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] keeps very scrupulous records.

Uranium from Seawater--Peak Uranium Most Unlikely for next 5,000 Years!

Brian Wang posted a promising look at the prospects of mining uranium oxide from seawater. How much uranium is in seawater compared to expected uranium reserves on land?

It is estimated that there is 4.7 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves (economically mineable) known to exist, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction).[32] An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s proved that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).[33][34]

Wikipedia

Brian estimates that the value of uranium in seawater at today's prices may approach US $720 trillion!

Uranium oxide would be retrieved from seawater with irradiated polymer (eg polyethylene) woven into netting, and moored in seawater for app. 60 days to absorb uranium. The netting would be retrieved, the uranium would be removed from the netting, the netting replaced in the sea, with the polymer absorbent re-used multiple times similar to fish nets.

Methods for improved harvesting of uranium from seawater suggested by Brian:

1. Functionalize an algae bloom to concentrate Uranium
See the work of Matt Francis at Berkeley for functionalizing virus shells and microbes for anti-cancer or for solar power. Many others are trying to engineer microbes using synthetic biology.

The goal would be to increase the concentration of Uranium from 3 parts per billion to 300 parts per million. The higher concentration allows regular methods of Uranium mining to take over. It is an increase of 100,000 times....

2. Nanomembrane Filtering
Nanomembrane filtering is starting to be used for desalinization of water at 100,000 gallons per day using a 6 inch diameter membrane.
If one could filter 1 billion gallons per day then there would be $1.92 million/day worth of Uranium. (3 mg per ton of water. 1 billion gallons is 4 million tons. 12,000 kg of Uranium in 1 billion gallons) Ten thousand of the 6 inch diameter nanomembrane enabled filtration pipes would be needed.

Advanced Nanotechnology

Here is an abstract from one of the most active Japanese research groups:

The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world's oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven fabric was >1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.

Source

More here.


Seawater contains many thousands of years worth of uranium at current usage. No one actually believes that human civilisation will still be based upon nuclear fission and fossil fuels one thousand years from now. Fossil fuels will still be around then, but will be considered too dirty, expensive, and valuable to burn for fuel. Nuclear fission will still be around if needed--certainly there is plenty of uranium and thorium--and may be used in particular applications where the fuel available makes clean fission more practical.

Most tech forecasters expect nuclear fusion to be widely available for large scale power generation within the next one thousand years--if not the next one hundred years. We will not need but a fraction of the available uranium and thorium over the long run.

Of course, that prediction is based upon the continuation of western civilisation--or perhaps other successor civilisations just as friendly to scientific/technological research and personal/economic freedoms currently guaranteed by the west. A surrender to reactionary religious fanatics or ideologues (luddites) would introduce a significant element of pessimism into the forecast.

Recent pessimistic "peak oil" pronouncements have been taken far too seriously by the many uninformed persons who attempt to follow trends. A recent declaration that peak oil occurred in 2006, was particularly ludicrous--since it was based upon selective production figures without taking into account reserves or various factors that could influence their production data. Too much peak oil "research"--like much of climate change research--is infested by ideologues who assume the result and carefully craft data to fit that result.

The important thing is to understand that it is resource prices--and how society reacts to price changes--that matter in the long run. It is natural for modern societies to begin to move from more expensive (particularly if dirtier like fossil fuels) to more economical and sustainable technologies. That is basic economics and will occur over time regardless of any "Kyoto" or other treaties or regulatory schemes.

For those of us interested in the next level, the singularity, or just a very promising future, it is always important to watch important trends, while always looking a little farther ahead.
Previously published at Al Fin.

Peak Uranium--As Overblown as Peak Oil?

Recent concerns over CAGW have led many planners--and even environmentalists--to suggest that increased use of nuclear power may reduce CO2 dumping into the atmosphere. But many anti-nuclear activists are claiming that there is a shortage of uranium which prevents any large scale nuclear energy alternatives. What is the reality?

Uranium is a common mineral--as plentiful as tin.

Uranium prices reached an all-time low in 2001, costing US$7/lb, but have since rebounded strongly. As of January 2007, uranium sells at US$72/lb and the price is rising fast. This is the highest price (adjusted for inflation et cetera) in 25 years [2]. The higher price has spurred new prospecting and reopening of old mines. Cameco and Rio Tinto Group are the top two producing companies (with 20% of the production each), followed by Areva (12%), BHP Billiton (9%) and Kazatomprom (9%).

Source
Deposits of uranium lie primarily in Canada, Australia, the US, South Africa, and countries of the former USSR. There is tremendous flexibility in the production of uranium, depending on pricing and political/regulatory conditions. Currently Canada and Australia are the world's major producers, but producers in the third world are gearing up for higher production with Chinese and Russian backing.


Realistically, "Peak Uranium", like "Peak Oil", is an almost meaningless term. Better terminology would refer to pricing of these commodities--which reflects supply, demand, and political/regulatory factors. Although some people have seized upon this report that suggests an impending bottleneck of uranium supplies for the US, more informed individuals with a broader perspective of commodities markets will understand that markets find a way--even when ivory tower academics can only see government action as a solution.

The important thing is to assure that government regulatory agencies do not make it impossible for the market to function.