I have blogged in previous posts about my concern over the cost of nuclear power. I believe that the cost of nuclear power will continue to rise and that, ultimately, the taxpayers in the United States and other parts of the world that use nuclear energy will wind up paying huge amounts of money to deal with spent nuclear fuel. There is a factor in the cost of nuclear power that I have not dealt with in detail before. Once a nuclear power plant has been built and is operating, fuel must be purchased for the reactor. While uranium is a fairly common element on Earth, mining it and processing it is expensive. Now a report has been published in the Science of the Total Environment journal that indicates that a supply gap in world uranium production is imminent which will result in spiraling uranium fuel costs for decades.
Although there has been an increase in uranium production in the past five years, the uranium being mined is lower grade than in previous production periods and does not produce as much energy per pound of uranium. The report says that initial estimates of uranium resources were too optimistic and that in a worst case scenario, only fifty percent of known reserves could be recovered and processed into fuel.
The report has analyzed the depletion of global deposits in past and present uranium mines. Peak uranium, the highest level of uranium production anticipated is projected to be fifty eight thousand tons in 2015. That is only two years away! The report predicts that production will drop to fifty four thousand tons by 2025. After 2025, it is predicted that there will be a rapid decline in product to about forty one thousand tons in 2030. The report states that these projected production figures will not be sufficient to fuel the existing and planned nuclear reactors during the next twenty years. Estimating a one percent rise in demand, the report predicts that there will be shortages of uranium and rising prices beyond inflation rates in the next five years.
Even if one percent of the global nuclear reactor capacity is phased out every year from now until 2025, there will still not be enough uranium to fuel the operating reactors. The authors of the report call for a worldwide systematic phase out of nuclear energy generation to begin immediately. This phase out could possibility delay the supply gap until after 2025. Military uranium reserves in the U.S. and Russia could also be tapped to prevent a short fall in uranium fuel production before 2025.
If there is not a concerted global effort to head off the coming shortage of uranium for fuel, the report predicts that the end of cheap uranium fuel will force a phase out of nuclear power generation along with wild price fluctuations, supply shortages and possible brown outs and black outs in countries that rely on nuclear power for a substantial portion of their electricity.
