Uranium reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve

Oil, gas, coal, nuclear (PWR, EPR, hot fusion, ITER), gas and coal thermal power plants, cogeneration, tri-generation. Peakoil, depletion, economics, technologies and geopolitical strategies. Prices, pollution, economic and social costs ...
User avatar
Exnihiloest
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 5365
Registration: 21/04/15, 17:57
x 660

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by Exnihiloest » 22/11/18, 22:25

Ahmed wrote:It simply means that the power of the richest of the poorest is growing and that the functioning of this society is increasingly difficult (how to dialogue when the interests of the various classes diverge more and more?).

Free affirmation.
Moreover, refusing any new gap in wealth from one to another on the pretext that it would give more power over others to the enriched, would then prohibit any enrichment that would not be done in concert for everyone. Another dangerous utopia which, in fact, reinforces general poverty by prohibiting those who can, to improve their lot and to train others, or kills in the bud the human motivations consisting of moving to satisfy their own needs. "Well-ordered charity begins with oneself": to be taken literally.
0 x
moinsdewatt
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 5111
Registration: 28/09/09, 17:35
Location: Isére
x 554

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by moinsdewatt » 03/02/19, 14:26

Mauritania: Aura Energy Finds Buyer for Tiris Uranium

Image

Ecofin Agency 29 Jan 2019

The mining company Aura Energy announced on Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement with Curzon Uranium Trading to sell a portion of the future uranium production from its Tiris project in Mauritania.

The agreement relates to the sale of 800 000 pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8) over a period of 7 years, from the beginning of production. Optional additional production of 1,8 million books will also be made available to Curzon.

The agreed selling price (over 44 $ / lb) exceeds the cash price of the pound of uranium, currently $ 29 $, and the total operating costs of the Tiris project.

"The conclusion of this agreement comes after many months of negotiations and clearly brings Aura closer to being a producer," said Peter Reeve, executive chairman of Aura.

Aura is currently conducting a final feasibility study for the Tiris project, which is nearing completion. The first construction is expected to begin this year and the project is expected to go into production by 2020.



https://www.agenceecofin.com/uranium/29 ... m-de-tiris
0 x
izentrop
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 13644
Registration: 17/03/14, 23:42
Location: picardie
x 1502
Contact :

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by izentrop » 01/04/19, 09:33

Some insights on the blog of a nuclear safety engineer https://doseequivalentbanana.home.blog/ ... -duranium/
Under current conditions of extraction, enrichment, use, recycling, and taking into account known reserves, yeah, about 100 years with roughly constant consumption.
But there are adjustment variables at all levels of the fuel cycle:
extraction
enrichment
consumption
recycling

What limits these adjustments is a little technique, a lot of economics: today, uranium costs a pittance, so 0 effort to save it. We only use the richest deposits, we enrich without forcing, we consume without optimizing, we hardly recycle.What would allow these adjustments, it would be a higher cost of uranium ... Exactly when it begins to be made a little more rare. Like the oil where the deposits were more numerous as prices went up. Like any natural resource of stock, in fact (hydrocarbons, metals ...).

And the cool thing about nuclear is that uranium is something like 1-2% of the kWh price paid by the user, in France anyway. On the order of 0,15 cents on 15 cents that costs a kWh ...

So even an increase of one factor 10 on the cost of uranium, it will increase the kWh of a dime and a half over several decades, it is negligible.
If the economic conditions make it possible to envisage parameters of adjustment of the ratio consumption / stock of uranium, which are they?

Exploitation of natural uranium

1) Exploit less rich deposits. Very simple, just make sure it stays profitable.
2) Exploiting "secondary deposits": coal ash, mining residues from other mining industries ... Same thing, nothing wizard, just a question of profitability.
These two options make it possible to gain a lot of resources, without changing the orders of magnitude, I think, but without being very expensive.

3) Exploit marine uranium.
Here, we are on a crazy idea, technically complicated (and therefore expensive) to implement, but extract uranium naturally dissolved in seawater would multiply the reserves by ... Many. More info in the thread below.

4) Recover highly enriched uranium or plutonium from nuclear weapons. It has already been done, no technical or economic difficulty, just have countries that disarm ^^
Enrichment

5) It is necessary to enrich more ... In France, when one enriches the uranium, one makes 1 ton of enriched with 3-4% and 7 tons of impoverished with 0,3% from 8 tons of natural with 0,7%.
If enrichment was pushed to reduce the 0,2% depleted content, see 0,1%, then natural uranium would be saved, producing equal enriched uranium.
But enriching is expensive, and natural uranium today costs nothing. We do not get tired, so.
But since the impoverished is not lost but wisely stored at home, we could still draw some more enriched if the need justified, no problem, it is thought for.
Use in reactors

6) Depending on the rate of enrichment, its manufacture, its mode of use, more or less energy can be drawn from one ton of nuclear fuel. Again, the question of economic balance between making the effort or spoiling the U that costs nothing.
And it's not marginal, because by increasing the enrichment a bit (3.5% to 4.5%), we can almost double the amount of energy that can be drawn from a ton of fuel. However, it entails multiple constraints, on the management of the heart and reprocessing. Nothing insurmountable, it has even been done, but it costs.
Reprocessing-Recycling

7) Currently, in France, produces a little more than 10% of our nuclear electricity with recycled fuel, with MOx (plutonium and uranium recovery from spent fuel and manufacture of new fuel with).
On the one hand, we could push this concept further, because today we only recover part of the used uranium to associate it with the plutonium, but we could also recover the rest and re-enrich it. . This is the EDF project, so as to increase to 25% of production based on recycled fuel by the 2025 horizon.
No technical lock, it has already been done on a nuclear power plant before being abandoned ... By economic reason.
On the other hand, recycling, even limited, is far from being generalized to the whole world. So there's a way to take recycling further down the world and save a lot of uranium resources.
So far, apart from marine uranium, I have mentioned fairly modest solutions that play marginally on the order of magnitude. Able to multiply the resources by 2, 3, maybe, I do not know ... But we will finish BIG.

8) FUCKING breeding. Plutonium, it is recycled once. With fast breeder reactors, we will be able to recycle it many times. And, above all, we will be able to produce astronomical quantities.
Just depleted uranium. We have our breeder reactor breeder, coated with depleted uranium that will absorb the neutrons that will escape from the heart. AND PAF. Neutron, uranium 238, bim, plutonium 239. Well, it's not so simple, but the result is that one.
And suddenly, in France, we end up being able to feed a fleet of breeders millennia, even tens of thousands of years.
Just with the depleted uranium that we already have in stock, purified, stored, ready. Without more need to extract a gram from the ground (once the cycle started, which requires a long transition phase all the same).
And globally, that's the idea too. By adding breeding based not more on uranium, but on thorium (more abundant than the U), it is even more the feast of the underpants.
Well, on the other hand, the overdriven is complicated - feasible, reactors have shown (Phoenix ...) and still show (BN-600, 800 ...) - but complicated. And so expensive at term, very expensive today (because not mature).
A bit like the extraction of the marine U. But suddenly, the day when the uranium reserves start to be a problem, we have 6 variables (to my knowledge) of adjustment to give a little wide ...
0 x
Bardal
I posted 500 messages!
I posted 500 messages!
posts: 509
Registration: 01/07/16, 10:41
Location: 56 and 45
x 198

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by Bardal » 01/04/19, 11:05

izentrop wrote:Some insights on the blog of a nuclear safety engineer https://doseequivalentbanana.home.blog/ ... -duranium/
Under current conditions of extraction, enrichment, use, recycling, and taking into account known reserves, yeah, about 100 years with roughly constant consumption.
But there are adjustment variables at all levels of the fuel cycle:
extraction
enrichment
consumption
recycling

... / ...

8) FUCKING breeding. Plutonium, it is recycled once. With fast breeder reactors, we will be able to recycle it many times. And, above all, we will be able to produce astronomical quantities.
Just depleted uranium. We have our breeder reactor breeder, coated with depleted uranium that will absorb the neutrons that will escape from the heart. AND PAF. Neutron, uranium 238, bim, plutonium 239. Well, it's not so simple, but the result is that one.
And suddenly, in France, we end up being able to feed a fleet of breeders millennia, even tens of thousands of years.
Just with the depleted uranium that we already have in stock, purified, stored, ready. Without more need to extract a gram from the ground (once the cycle started, which requires a long transition phase all the same).
And globally, that's the idea too. By adding breeding based not more on uranium, but on thorium (more abundant than the U), it is even more the feast of the underpants.
Well, on the other hand, the overdriven is complicated - feasible, reactors have shown (Phoenix ...) and still show (BN-600, 800 ...) - but complicated. And so expensive at term, very expensive today (because not mature).
A bit like the extraction of the marine U. But suddenly, the day when the uranium reserves start to be a problem, we have 6 variables (to my knowledge) of adjustment to give a little wide ...


On the cost of breeding, let's not exaggerate anything. What is certain is that the sector chosen by the CEA (fast neutrons-plutonium-sodium) will necessarily be more expensive than the current pressurized water-neutron system. But it was (and remains) perfectly possible to choose breeder solutions molten salts-thorium, or molten salts-uranium-plutonium, which promise to be cheaper than the Phoenix solutions, and even less expensive than the generation III plants, while offering the same advantages of breeding as Phénix or Superphénix ...

One even wonders why the researches on these channels molten salts, committed since the 70 years, were abandoned in the middle of the 80 years in favor of the plutonium-sodium sector; no serious explanation of the CEA has ever been given, and this staggering choice persists.

Remember that this kind of plant, much simpler to build, is intrinsically safe and is able to burn at 100% (against 2-3% with the current industry) both natural uranium and thorium, bringing the availability of ore many millennia, even if we burned 50 times more than today.

The use of thorium instead of uranium would also provide an elegant solution to dispose of radioactive waste by burning it for electricity.

Yes, really, one wonders what can motivate such choices ... Well, China, which is working on this issue, will provide us when the time comes molten salt plants, when photovoltaic (they provide us with already) and wind power (also imported) will have shown their limits (which is already the case in Germany and Spain).
0 x
izentrop
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 13644
Registration: 17/03/14, 23:42
Location: picardie
x 1502
Contact :

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by izentrop » 01/04/19, 14:49

bardal wrote:Yes, really, one wonders what can motivate such choices ... Well, China, which is working on this issue, will provide us when the time comes molten salt plants, when photovoltaic (they provide us with already) and wind power (also imported) will have shown their limits (which is already the case in Germany and Spain).
Yes for France, thank you Mr Hulot : Mrgreen:
Many technical problems remain to solve in terms of materials, maintenance, complex and evolving chemistry. Many studies and tests will be necessary before a demonstrator can be realized. For example, it is necessary to find an alloy capable of withstanding for years corrosion of molten salts at a temperature of 600-700 ° C. No prototype reactor construction is currently underway. It would also require a certification process that would not be simple, given the originality of the concept, and that no one has yet committed. http://www.laradioactivite.com/site/pag ... Fondus.htm
It's not just the Chinese on the shots.
Terrestrial Energy's molten salt reactor kicks off key milestone

There is also TerraPower, an energy company co-founded by Bill Gates is developing a nuclear reactor of a new kind https://trustmyscience.com/entreprise-e ... eau-genre/
0 x
moinsdewatt
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 5111
Registration: 28/09/09, 17:35
Location: Isére
x 554

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by moinsdewatt » 02/04/19, 02:02

More 65% volume production for Kazatomprom uranium in 2018.


Kazatomprom uranium sales jump 65%

Reuters | 5 days ago |

Kazakh uranium miner Kazatomprom expects further growth of this year, it said on Wednesday after posting to 112 percent jump in 2018.

London-listed Kazatomprom's net income adjusted for one-off transactions stood at 66.8 trillion tenge (about $ 177 million), it said in a statement.

The world's largest uranium miner said it expected 2019 consolidated revenue of 485-505 trillion tenge, with higher prices offsetting lower physical sales.

For 2018, revenue rose 58 percent to 436.6 billion tenge while Kazatomprom's uranium sales grew 3 percent in physical terms, it said.

But this year, Kazatomprom plans to sell less tons in 13,500 tons compared with 14,500 tons in 15,287.

Without one-off adjustments, Kazatomprom's 2018 profit surged 173 percent to 380.3 trillion tenge last year, according to the statement.

The company would have made the announcement to make $ 200 million for 2018 and 2019, Kazatomprom chief executive Galymzhan Pirmatov told reporters on Wednesday.



http://www.mining.com/web/kazatomprom-u ... s-jump-65/
0 x
izentrop
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 13644
Registration: 17/03/14, 23:42
Location: picardie
x 1502
Contact :

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by izentrop » 02/04/19, 02:40

Translated it's better for a forum French :)
Kazatomprom, a Kazakh miner, expects further revenue growth this year, he said on Wednesday, after recording an 112% increase in adjusted net profit for 2018 after rising volumes and selling prices.

The net profit of Kazatomprom, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, adjusted for one-off transactions amounts to 66,8 billion tenge (about 177 million), the statement said.

The world's largest uranium mining company said it expects 2019's 485 consolidated revenue to reach 505 billion, with higher prices offsetting lower physical sales.

For 2018, sales grew 58% to 436,6 billion tenge, while sales of uranium of Kazatomprom grew by 3%, he added.

But this year, Kazatomprom plans to sell a little less uranium in physical terms, according to a presentation of 13 500 to 14 500 tons, versus 15 287 tons in 2018.
0 x
eclectron
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 2922
Registration: 21/06/16, 15:22
x 397

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by eclectron » 02/04/19, 10:45

bardal wrote:........

- there remains approximately 50 years of uranium to be mined to cover the current needs with the current techniques (pressurized water-uranium channel, no breeding), known reserves of uranium; it will be noted that by drawing uranium from seawater (it is more expensive, but has practically no impact on the price of the kWh produced), one can multiply the reserves by at least one thousand, without changing anything. otherwise.

- by switching to breeder-generation (and the sodium-plutonium sector is not the only one possible, a molten salt sector is entirely conceivable, and has already been tested), neither 1% of the uranium is burned, but 100%; our 50 years of critical reserves become 5000 years (maybe 4500, or 4000, I do not care)

- by passing to the thorium channel (4 times more abundant than uranium), also burned at 100% ...

- even if humanity had to increase very seriously its production, what I wish, the current resources are counted in millennia; even if we multiplied by 50 (which besides does not seem to me useful) ...

... and try to find out from reliable sources ...


All this is interesting but raises some questions all the same.

1) These miracle clean and abundant nuclear solutions, have they passed the stage of the demonstrator?

2) Their implementation does not pose hidden problems, or reduced (the engineer is often optimistic about his solution ...) : Lol: )

3) If no, why are these sectors not developed? (By that it will not take long to urge : roll:, the implementation time is not to neglect, especially if they are emerging sectors)
0 x
whatever.
We will try the 3 posts per day max
Bardal
I posted 500 messages!
I posted 500 messages!
posts: 509
Registration: 01/07/16, 10:41
Location: 56 and 45
x 198

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by Bardal » 02/04/19, 17:27

No, these solutions have never gone beyond the demonstrator stage, which is what makes them weak today compared to other sectors, which have accumulated thousands of reactor years and benefit from a real sector ranging from fuel production for waste treatment; it is undoubtedly this inertia of an existing production apparatus, very heavy and very capital-intensive, which explains the lack of enthusiasm in developing this path. But these are not "quick fixes", just options for harnessing nuclear energy in my opinion more interesting than current solutions.

Does not their implementation pose hidden or diminished problems? If, probably, as for any innovation, and the only way to solve them, it is to experiment long (and that is what missed); on the other hand, their advantages seem so obvious and important that it seems absurd not to confront the possible problems (of which one has a rather precise idea besides).

Why are these sectors not developed? This, we have a pretty clear idea: at the time of the first developments, the absolute urgency of decision-makers (we did not lack energy and global warming was only a speculation of some originals) was the satisfaction military needs; the thorium sector was unable to provide adequate material for atomic bombs and the pressurized water system had a reactor adapted to the propulsion of submarines; it is this reactor that has served as a model for current civil reactors. The discovery of uranium deposits in the US has done the rest, and the United States has dragged the rest of the world into this sector. The war of the lobbies did the rest by leading to the victory of the uranium industry ... Let us recall that at that time France and England had a common project of molten salt reactor, project which fell into the water as a result of the projects US ...

In France, the CEA, which has embarked on the Superphénix and Astrid track, blocks all molten salt projects; only the CNRS, with an extremely light budget, is developing this path.

On the whole file, see https://fissionliquide.fr/tag/sel-fondu/ et https://fissionliquide.fr/tag/msfr/ . Be careful, these are rather heavy files and a little messy ...
0 x
eclectron
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 2922
Registration: 21/06/16, 15:22
x 397

Re: Uranium: reserves and equivalent Hubbert curve




by eclectron » 02/04/19, 23:38

Thank you for the detailed feedback.
On paper, the world energy could indeed be nuclear electricity for + 1000 years.
This implies to transit on all that is transports, rather towards the hydrogen a priori. Sacred renewal or adaptation of the machine park.
I fear alas that all these technos are not operational in time, that is to act significantly in favor of the climate and avoid crises on oil.
The "we could" do not reassure me about the fact of avoiding major crises, question of deadlines and the extent of retraining.
0 x
whatever.
We will try the 3 posts per day max

Go back to "Fossil energies: oil, gas, coal and nuclear electricity (fission and fusion)"

Who is online ?

Users browsing this forum : No registered users and 233 guests