Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
 Re: What do you think of Uranium now?  [Re: Mr. Bojangles]
#15005983 - 08/31/11 12:59 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
So living within a 20 mile radius of Fukushima would not be hazardous to my health?  I'm talking the health effects of the zone surrounding a nuclear disaster.
Maybe. This is why utilities have exclusion zones, warning systems, and evacuation plans. I'm talking impact to the general population, which makes a lot more sense, imo. Why only count ppl living within a 20 mile radius of a plant?
btw, living within 20 miles of a coal fired power plant will give you much higher radiation levels along with other hazardous pollutants than a nuclear power plant. Why only consider the 2 major incidents in your analysis of the risk of nuclear power? You sweep under the bus the hundreds of other nuclear reactors that operated for decades without any impact to the public. Doesn't seem like a fair assessment of risk to me, but more like you're wearing horse-blinders.
Quote:
I don't think it is, especially if we start using more and more nuclear power...accumulating more and more waste. A 20 year decommissioning and hundreds to thousands of years of depletion is hardly what I call overstated.
All the waste ever generated at US nuclear power plants is stored on-site, most in spent fuel storage pools that are small enough to fit inside the reactor containment. With reprocessing, the waste volume is furhter reduced by over 90%. What's left over has orders of magnitude shorter half-life and is safe in hundreds of years. Managing waste for hundreds of years, versus tens of thousands, is well within our engineering capabilities.
Quote:
Add in that people are already getting caught illegally dumping waste and it turns into a problem.
Who is illegally dumping high-level radioactive waste from the nuclear power industry?
Quote:
Yes, and I'm not referring to coal, coal is risky...but not solar and wind power.
And solar and wind power also aren't feasible. They are tremendously expensive, have low capacity, would require an obscene amount of land and raw materials for the manufacture of the solar panels and windmills, and would probably require a complete restructuring of our electric grid due to the very different way they produce electricity.
Quote:
A tremendous amount of mining, refining, and shipping? Do you think our Uranium just appears? And that's a process that we need to repeat over and over and over to keep the nuclear fuel coming. The space that turbines take up can still be used (and are still used). Farms and grazing livestock are still in places where there are now wind turbines. Not to mention offshore where there's even greater wind capacity.
We're talking an order of magnitude difference in the amount of raw materials.
Quote:
The construction of existing 1970-vintage U.S. nuclear power plants required 40 metric tons (MT) of steel and 190 cubic meters (m3) of concrete per average megawatt of electricity (MW(e)) generating capacity. For comparison, a typical wind energy system operating with 6.5 meters-per-second average wind speed requires construction inputs of 460 MT of steel and 870 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e). Coal uses 98 MT of steel and 160 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e); & natural-gas combined cycle plants use 3.3 MT steel and 27 m**3 concrete.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
As for uranium mining, a 1000 MWe nuclear powered station requires 6.6 lbs of U-235 a day.
Offshore wind power is even more expensive than on-shore wind power due to increased installation and maintenance costs. Not to mention how they have to be built to withstand the grueling environment of being out at sea.
Quote:
But building an infrastructure of clean, renewable energy that doesn't cost us money for fuel, money for processing and money for clean-up is where I'd hope that our country will go in the future.
My point is you need to talk all costs into consideration. Not just fuel, which is relatively cheap for nuclear, and clean-up costs. With wind/solar, there will be an environmental impact, there will be maintenance costs, there will likely be major logistical problems, and there will be perhaps insurmountable capital investment costs.
Wind and solar have their places, but I don't believe it will be in large-scale, base-load electricity generation any time soon. The recession kind of took focus away from carbon emission concerns on a political level, but if countries start imposing fees for carbon-producing electricity, there won't be many short-term solutions to our energy problems except for nuclear power.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
 HarveyWalbanger
Demiurge
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 3,067
Loc: 8b
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15006010 - 08/31/11 01:07 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Even considering those new Japanese windmills which, as far as I've seen, haven't proven anything yet. Remember when nuclear power was still on the drawing board they said it would be "too cheap to meter". Well I'll believe how great these new and improved windmills are when I see the first wind lens generation facility open up.
You didn't research it at all, did you? You just pawned it off on "I'll see it when I believe it" The idea is completely sound (It makes a low pressure system behind the windmill itself. ANY windmill, with the addition of a tapered ring around it can have it's efficiency increased) And thereby draws wind through it faster. It was proven in the video, and is under far better scrutiny right now than your uninformed, and frankly bullhead opinions on the matter.
Quote:
Considering a very large windmill that can produce 1 MW, running at 35% capacity, it would take 834,312 windmills to produce that amount of power.
If this technology works, you can divide that number by three.
Quote:
And despite those costs, it's still one of the most economical energy sources... much more so than wind and solar power.
Again, your totally discounting the possible upper ends of these technologies. Thin film silicon voltaics can be made out of highly engineered films of silicon (one of the most common elements in the universe) The upper limit of this particular technology is quite impressive.
The sunlight that actually reaches earth's surface is almost 7000 times what we use currently use. Now this is a farfetched example and the technology to do so does not yet exist, but it would take an hour and a half of ALL the sunlight on earth surface to power us for an entire year.
Biogas. Turning our landfills into methane factories. It'll take retrofitting our landfills (land areas that have already been spoken for) to produce the most energetic hydrocarbon there is... and carbon neutral.
Now, I counter with some question. How much uranium is there? How fast can we build power nuclear plant? Can building such structures keep up with exponential growth? .....I bet photovoltaics and wind energy can be built far far faster.
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
|
Quote:
You didn't research it at all, did you? You just pawned it off on "I'll see it when I believe it" The idea is completely sound (It makes a low pressure system behind the windmill itself. ANY windmill, with the addition of a tapered ring around it can have it's efficiency increased) And thereby draws wind through it faster.
Wrong, actually, I did a google search on it when I saw the post and all that came up were some news sources saying how the windmills could potentially become a viable energy source. I didn't find any technical information on them and it seems like every site had the same amount of limited information and same youtube video. I'm not one to believe what a treehugger news organization says at face value (I shit you not, the name of the one website was treehugger.com). Feel free to link us to other sources that provide additional information. Problem is, and you should be able to admit this, that technology in the R&D stage can promise lots of things. What matters is if it can deliver.
Ever hear of the hydrogen fuel cell? My dad was telling me about them when I was still in high school saying how the news was calling them the future of automotive transportation. George Bush called for a billion dollar initiative to make them the future replacement of the gasoline internal combustion engine back in 2003. Here we are 10 years later. Do you see any hydrogen fuel cell cars in sight? I don't. Maybe California has them. 
I rest my case... I'll believe the prowess of your windmills when I see them.
Quote:
If this technology works, you can divide that number by three.
What do you mean "if"? I thought it was in a youtube video that it does work. Therefore, it must be true and we will soon be replacing all of our electricity sources with windmills with rings.
Quote:
Again, your totally discounting the possible upper ends of these technologies. Thin film silicon voltaics can be made out of highly engineered films of silicon (one of the most common elements in the universe) The upper limit of this particular technology is quite impressive.
The sunlight that actually reaches earth's surface is almost 7000 times what we use currently use. Now this is a farfetched example and the technology to do so does not yet exist, but it would take an hour and a half of ALL the sunlight on earth surface to power us for an entire year.
Biogas. Turning our landfills into methane factories. It'll take retrofitting our landfills (land areas that have already been spoken for) to produce the most energetic hydrocarbon there is... and carbon neutral.
A lot of "ifs" and "only if technology was far enough along" in your posts. How does that help us now? Or even 20 years from now? None of this stuff has been proven effective or economical enough to replace the accepted, widely-used power generation sources. Do you think a utility, when they want to expand on their power plant production fleet, is going to choose to build a landfill powered methane factory, which will be laiden with operational challenges and surprises being a first-of-its kind plant? As for your "only-if" solar panels, they can't build something that doesn't exist and who's development is decades down the road. They would much sooner choose a proven reactor design, or maybe, if they are feeling adventurous, go with a design that attempts to improve on some of those tried-and-true design features. They got big money on the line here, they want as little uncertainty as possible. They want to know what to expect out of their new facility.
If your technologies do come along, and the technology proves itself, I'll accept it with open arms, but it doesn't exist yet. My opinions are formulated on the wind and solar panels that we have now and so are the utilities that would actually be building these things.
Quote:
Now, I counter with some question. How much uranium is there? How fast can we build power nuclear plant? Can building such structures keep up with exponential growth? .....I bet photovoltaics and wind energy can be built far far faster.
At current usage levels, and with our current measured levels of world uranium resources, we have enough for 80 years of a once-through fuel cycle. I put "current" in italics because as prices continue to rise, exploration increases and more is found. The measured levels of uranium resources has increased by threefold since 1975. With reprocessing and the use of breeder reactors, those 80 years can be extended much further. A breeder reactor can witness a 50-fold increase in the utilization of uranium by operating on the abundant decay product, plutonium.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
Westinghouse claims their AP1000 can be built in 36 months. I'd say 4-5 years is more reasonable. This was a problem in the industry years ago because of a faulty licensing process. That has since been streamlined, which will avoid the delays that have caused construction setbacks and killed the bottom line of some utilities.
Nevada Solar One was built in 16 months. Faster, yes, but who cares? It produces 13 times less electricity than an AP1000 and probably takes up about 20 times more land. I doubt that an offshore windmill farm capable of producing 1000 MWe, plus the transmission lines required for such a facility, would be built much faster than 4 years.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
Mr. Bojangles
Breathe In
Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 1,534
Loc: The Dirty
Last seen: 18 days, 19 hours
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15006723 - 08/31/11 03:22 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
btw, living within 20 miles of a coal fired power plant will give you much higher radiation levels along with other hazardous pollutants than a nuclear power plant. Why only consider the 2 major incidents in your analysis of the risk of nuclear power? You sweep under the bus the hundreds of other nuclear reactors that operated for decades without any impact to the public. Doesn't seem like a fair assessment of risk to me, but more like you're wearing horse-blinders.
I'm not arguing coal, we all know we can't rely on coal for the future so you should probably stop referencing it. I said in my previous post that nuclear power has a relatively safe track record with only 8 level 5 or above incidents. I'm just going to the what-if's...which are pretty important when you're deal with nuclear power. Like "what if a 46 foot tsunami came".
Quote:
All the waste ever generated at US nuclear power plants is stored on-site
No it isn't...they sit in the pool for 20 years then it's transported by truck or train to a repository...still decaying. Remember the whole Yucca mountain thing? Granted, those storage casks are pretty sturdy, but it's not all done on site.
Quote:
Who is illegally dumping high-level radioactive waste from the nuclear power industry?
The mafia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/09/italy.nuclearpower
Quote:
My point is you need to talk all costs into consideration. Not just fuel, which is relatively cheap for nuclear, and clean-up costs. With wind/solar, there will be an environmental impact, there will be maintenance costs, there will likely be major logistical problems, and there will be perhaps insurmountable capital investment costs.
The costs keep coming for nuclear power though, whereas they stop (except for maintenance and repair) for renewable sources. What logistical problems are you referring to? We have vast amounts of flat, windy space to build upon...and everyone who owns a house with a roof has ample capacity for solar power. Besides the environmental impact of building the infrastructure, what else is there? It sounds as if you're adverse to any infrastructure building if you're citing manufacturing and transportation impact.
--------------------
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
-Fracois Marie Voltaire
|
HarveyWalbanger
Demiurge
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 3,067
Loc: 8b
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15006778 - 08/31/11 03:31 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
I'm not one to believe what a treehugger news organization says at face value (I shit you not, the name of the one website was treehugger.com).
"Goddamn left wing tree hugging liberals."
Quote:
Problem is, and you should be able to admit this, that technology in the R&D stage can promise lots of things. What matters is if it can deliver.
Hey, a fact. Yeah, I'll admit that.
Quote:
Ever hear of the hydrogen fuel cell?
Did I mention hydrogen? Knock it off with the straw man arguments. Your bias is detracting from your ability to debate. Your goal is to convince people, not throw as many stones as you can lay your hands on.
Quote:
Therefore, it must be true and we will soon be replacing all of our electricity sources with windmills with rings.
"Then everyone would be doing it" Another strawman argument. People are slow to change and you know it.
Quote:
A lot of "ifs" and "only if technology was far enough along" in your posts. How does that help us now? Or even 20 years from now? None of this stuff has been proven effective or economical enough to replace the accepted, widely-used power generation sources.
Yeah well, rome wasn't built in a day. How does it help us? Oh I don't know... Maybe in a couple hundred years, you won't be forced to trawl the oceans to scrape up ever last bit of uranium just so you can turn on the cooling systems for your powerplants?
Quote:
Do you think a utility, when they want to expand on their power plant production fleet, is going to choose to build a landfill powered methane factory, which will be laiden with operational challenges and surprises being a first-of-its kind plant?
The technology exists already and it's kicking ass. More research, young padawan.
Quote:
They would much sooner choose a proven reactor design, or maybe, if they are feeling adventurous, go with a design that attempts to improve on some of those tried-and-true design features.
Thermodynamic cycles have very real limiting factors, the only way to improve upon them is to link several together. Aside from the concept of breeder reactors, they've already reached the upper limit of how much power you can get from a nuclear reactor 
Quote:
At current usage levels, and with our current measured levels of world uranium resources, we have enough for 80 years of a once-through fuel cycle. I put "current" in italics because as prices continue to rise, exploration increases and more is found. The measured levels of uranium resources has increased by threefold since 1975. With reprocessing and the use of breeder reactors, those 80 years can be extended much further. A breeder reactor can witness a 50-fold increase in the utilization of uranium by operating on the abundant decay product, plutonium.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
Westinghouse claims their AP1000 can be built in 36 months. I'd say 4-5 years is more reasonable. This was a problem in the industry years ago because of a faulty licensing process. That has since been streamlined, which will avoid the delays that have caused construction setbacks and killed the bottom line of some utilities.
I knew the answer. I'm well versed in power generation. I just wanted you to see the math of your holy grail.
And the maintainance costs I saw you mention? You say maintainance costs, I say employment opportunities.
Edited by HarveyWalbanger (08/31/11 03:43 PM)
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: Mr. Bojangles]
#15007031 - 08/31/11 04:24 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
I'm not arguing coal, we all know we can't rely on coal for the future so you should probably stop referencing it.
It's the largest source of electricity production in the world. Obviously I'm going to make reference to it when discussing electricity. The US has huge coal resources. No matter what your opinion, it isn't going anywhere any time soon. If we scale back nuclear, you can bet coal will step in.
Quote:
No it isn't...they sit in the pool for 20 years then it's transported by truck or train to a repository...still decaying. Remember the whole Yucca mountain thing? Granted, those storage casks are pretty sturdy, but it's not all done on site.
Yucca mountain isn't open. All US produced nuclear waste is stored on site.
Quote:
The mafia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/09/italy.nuclearpower
Quote:
except for maintenance and repair
That's a big except, considering the millions of windmills you will need.
Quote:
What logistical problems are you referring to? We have vast amounts of flat, windy space to build upon...and everyone who owns a house with a roof has ample capacity for solar power.
Our power grid was built for large, centralized power sources. Renewables will be spread far and wide, and you will need to come up with new means of distributing and storing power. What happens when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining? Where's the power going to come from then? You can't just depend on local sources anymore and you may need to implement energy storage means.
Quote:
Besides the environmental impact of building the infrastructure, what else is there? It sounds as if you're adverse to any infrastructure building if you're citing manufacturing and transportation impact.
The obscene cost of wind and solar power.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
|
Quote:
Did I mention hydrogen? Knock it off with the straw man arguments. Your bias is detracting from your ability to debate. Your goal is to convince people, not throw as many stones as you can lay your hands on.
It's an example, ever hear of one? New technology promises a lot but doesn't always deliver. BTW, got any more sources on your miracle windmills?
Quote:
Quote:
Therefore, it must be true and we will soon be replacing all of our electricity sources with windmills with rings.
"Then everyone would be doing it" Another strawman argument. People are slow to change and you know it.
I don't even know what you're talking about with this quip. Do you realize I was being sarcastic? Apparently not.
Quote:
Yeah well, rome wasn't built in a day. How does it help us? Oh I don't know... Maybe in a couple hundred years, you won't be forced to trawl the oceans to scrape up ever last bit of uranium just so you can turn on the cooling systems for your powerplants?
I ain't talking about a couple hundred years. I'm talking the next few decades. Follow? By all means, research away into alternative energy sources. I'm all for it. But you can't expect these technologies, which are in their infancies, to take over in the next 20, 30, or even 50 years. The solar and wind power of today is not capable of handling our needs.
Quote:
The technology exists already and it's kicking ass. More research, young padawan.
Sources for all these claims you've been making? How many utilities are running landfill-powered methane factories? What percentage of our electricity demands does it meet? What are the costs?
Quote:
Thermodynamic cycles have very real limiting factors, the only way to improve upon them is to link several together. Aside from the concept of breeder reactors, they've already reached the upper limit of how much power you can get from a nuclear reactor
Oh, and windmills and solar panels don't have limiting factors?
Quote:
Crystalline silicon devices are now approaching the theoretical limiting efficiency of 29%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell
Quote:
The theoretical upper limit to the efficiency of a wind machine (of any kind) is 59%.
http://www.energyadvocate.com/fw91.htm
Last time I checked, running a Rankine Cycle with superheat can reach efficiencies approaching 50%. The efficiency isn't all that matters though, well versed one. You also have capacity to worry about (windmills only run about 35% of the time compared to a nuclear power plant at 90%) as well as the sheer quantity of power produced.
Perhaps you should do some "More research, young padawan".
Quote:
And the maintainance costs I saw you mention? You say maintainance costs, I say employment opportunities.
Yeah, and who pays for those maintenance costs? The end user of the electricity who promptly switches to the provider using coal and nuclear power who can offer a significantly better rate. Creating unnecessary work isn't a good way to create employment opportunities.
Edited by pothead_bob (08/31/11 05:03 PM)
|
Mr. Bojangles
Breathe In
Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 1,534
Loc: The Dirty
Last seen: 18 days, 19 hours
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15007209 - 08/31/11 04:59 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Well I hope for our sake that this world's and our country's engineers and innovators are more optimistic and can come up with something better than coal and nuclear power for our future. We're getting off topic...
Back to the OP:
I'm more familiar with the uranium mining companies...not too much with processing. At the moment I'd hold off. Ever since March when they plummeted they've kept going down...a few false spikes and then lower lows followed.
Cameco's (the largest uranium producer in the world) earnings statement from this last quarter was not good...revenue dropped like 20 something percent. Don't listen to the whackjob "analysis" PR's you see on yahoo finance...they're been saying the uranium stocks were a good buy ever since April.
My suggestion: there looks to be some decent consolidation forming after the late July/early August dropoff in pps. Just sit and wait to see if it breaks out of that consolidation. It can go either way...Saudi Arabia is poised to set up 16 new reactors in the next 20 years but Germany is scaling back its nuclear program. It just depends all on how investors see it and react. Lets just say that at the moment they do not quite have pothead_bob's enthusiasm with uranium
I know you probably want to maximize your earnings but if you buy in consolidation and the bears take over, like they've been doing for the past 6 months, you'll be holding the bag 
--------------------
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
-Fracois Marie Voltaire
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: Mr. Bojangles]
#15007299 - 08/31/11 05:13 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah, well the Germans were always on the fence with nuclear power. Fukishima was the tipping point. So they shut down several plants, ramped up coal, and started importing more electricity from France. Guess where France gets 78% of their electricity from?
China discussed with Westinghouse about getting 100 reactors into operation by 2020. Granted, this was way back in 2008 before Fukishima.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_575073.html
However, I read that, while they are slowing down and assessing their plans, they don't expect drastic changes in their nuclear power development plan. They're doing safety inspections, which is a good thing.
Quote:
Despite the vibrant development of renewable energy, nuclear power remains an irreplaceable choice for China to achieve the target of generating 15 percent of its electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2020, said Zhang. "We should take this crisis as an opportunity to catch up as the world's leading nuclear power country."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-08/31/content_13225025.htm
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
HarveyWalbanger
Demiurge
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 3,067
Loc: 8b
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15009459 - 09/01/11 12:24 AM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
BTW, got any more sources on your miracle windmills?
Does a peer reviewed science journal do anything for you?
http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/3/4/634/pdf
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
|
See, now was that so hard? As I said before, this technology is in the very first stages of its infancy. Just moving from basic theory to some experimental applications. The authors saw some significant changes in efficiency gains between the micro-scale and small-scale models, so we'll see what kind of results they get when they build large- and full-scale experimental facilities. The work looks promising, but, like I told you before, it's a far cry from being implemented on a practical basis. So by all means, continue on with the wind, solar, landfill research. I encourage it just as much as I encourage improving (as opposed to scrapping) existing power technology, which includes nuclear power.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
cole2684
Gamer
Registered: 02/17/10
Posts: 367
Last seen: 9 months, 4 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15047748 - 09/08/11 02:13 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Back to uranium however:
China has 14 operational nuclear reactors and according to the World Nuclear Association, 77 more reactors are either planned or under construction with aim toward increasing nuclear capacity to 80 GWe by 2020, 200 by 2030 and 400 GWe by 2050.
However, the nation’s domestic uranium resources don’t even come close to the amount needed to fuel such an expansion. To secure uranium reserves, China has been aggressively moving to sign supply contracts and joint venture mining agreements as well as to purchase uranium mines overseas.
By 2020, China is expected to account for 20 percent of global uranium demand, according to Resource Capital Research.
add to that China's economy overall is expected to grow by 8% next year... Uranium looks good. I don't think it matters all that much if our countries (and their dwindling economies) are backing away from nuclear energy when the largest economy is aggressively expanding it. Did I mention they have a crapton of people?
--------------------
---------------------------------------------
I'm a man who really enjoys his taffy.
---------------------------------------------
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: cole2684]
#15047846 - 09/08/11 02:30 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Precisely, however...
Quote:
I don't think it matters all that much if our countries (and their dwindling economies) are backing away from nuclear energy
I don't believe that our country is backing away from it (if you're talking about the US, that is). Obama was clear that his administration was still in support of it after Fukishima.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20043515-503544.html
The problem with nuclear, from the utility's standpoint, still comes down to upfront cost and, more so, uncertainty. I think that is going to become less of an issue with increasing alternative fuel costs and especially if carbon-cap legislation comes to light.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
cole2684
Gamer
Registered: 02/17/10
Posts: 367
Last seen: 9 months, 4 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15047879 - 09/08/11 02:35 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Obama was clear about a lot of things. But I don't see him printing money to start new plants.
--------------------
---------------------------------------------
I'm a man who really enjoys his taffy.
---------------------------------------------
|
pothead_bob
Resident Pothead
Registered: 04/12/08
Posts: 1,797
Loc: Your computer screen
Last seen: 3 months, 15 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: cole2684]
#15047940 - 09/08/11 02:44 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Obama was clear about a lot of things. But I don't see him printing money to start new plants.
So that's the only means, in your mind, by which the government can support nuclear power?
Quote:
Obama's budget proposal for 2011 would add $36 billion in new federal loan guarantees to $18.5 billion already budgeted but not spent — for a total of $54.5 billion. The new $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees will go toward the construction and operation of a pair of reactors in Burke County, Ga., by Southern Co.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35421517/ns/business-oil_and_energy/t/obama-renews-commitment-nuclear-energy/
Sounds to me like he already did "put his money where his mouth is".
Besides, it's a good thing "he" isn't printing money to build plants because then the government would own the plant and, likely, drive it into the ground at cost to the taxpayers like every other venture they undertake. They belong in the hands of private utilities.
--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences. -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)
Speak well of your enemies. After all, you made them.
|
cole2684
Gamer
Registered: 02/17/10
Posts: 367
Last seen: 9 months, 4 days
|
Re: What do you think of Uranium now? [Re: pothead_bob]
#15048538 - 09/08/11 04:38 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Good point. I was unaware he actually did that. Even more bullish for uranium I suppose.
--------------------
---------------------------------------------
I'm a man who really enjoys his taffy.
---------------------------------------------
| |
|
|
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: geokills, Wiccan_Seeker, ZippoZ, automan
963 topic views. 0 members, 6 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Toggle Favorite | Print Topic ]
| | |
|
|
|
Images only 
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Shop for: 
Edit 
Reply 
