“Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

— Peter Bradford, former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member

Like coal, natural gas, and oil, uranium is a nonrenewable resource. Consequently, is uranium being depleted faster than we think? With all the talk of building and investing in so-called next generation nuclear reactors, is enough uranium available to meet this proposed new demand in addition to sustaining current demand? Some U.S. Senators are proposing that more nuclear energy is the answer to address our climate change and energy troubles.

U.S. Senators Jim Webb, a democrat from Virginia, and Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, do not support the current cap-and-trade legislation, but these Senators are throwing their support behind nuclear power and carbon-capture-and-storage technology. Furthermore, “Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is working with Democrat John Kerry on the bill, highlighted how France now derives 80 percent of its energy from nuclear power and is presently constructing a next-generation reactor, said to be the most advanced in the world.” More on dwindling uranium supplies from the Physics arXiv Blog:

The world is about to enter a period of unprecedented investment in nuclear power. The combined threats of climate change, energy security and fears over the high prices and dwindling reserves of oil are forcing governments towards the nuclear option. The perception is that nuclear power is a carbon-free technology, that it breaks our reliance on oil and that it gives governments control over their own energy supply.

That looks dangerously overoptimistic, says Michael Dittmar, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who publishes the final chapter of an impressive four-part analysis of the global nuclear industry on the arXiv today.

Perhaps the most worrying problem is the misconception that uranium is plentiful. The world’s nuclear plants today eat through some 65,000 tons of uranium each year. Of this, the mining industry supplies about 40,000 tons. The rest comes from secondary sources such as civilian and military stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium. “But without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013, concludes Dittmar.

It’s not clear how the shortfall can be made up since nobody seems to know where the mining industry can look for more.

That means countries that rely on uranium imports such as Japan and many western countries will face uranium .shortages, possibly as soon as 2013. Far from being the secure source of energy that many governments are basing their future energy needs on, nuclear power looks decidedly rickety.

And from PhysOrg.com:

New York Times energy reporter Matthew Wald, writing in Technology Review, said new reactors would be unable to pay for themselves because of the massive cost of construction and competition from emerging alternatives that could affect the energy price. Wald compared the costs per kilowatt of capacity of nuclear ($4,000), coal ($3,000) and natural gas ($800), which makes the nuclear option a big financial gamble. The future cost of fossil fuels is unknown, and could also affect the nuclear industry’s viability.

Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions than the nuclearization of energy sources. From Los Angeles Times:

If the U.S. wants to help stop global warming, nuclear power is not the way to go, according to a new report released today.

The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions, researchers said.

.       .       .

But even if the nuclear industry managed to build 100 reactors by 2030, the total power produced would reduce total U.S. emissions only 12% over the next 20 years, which Environment California deemed “far too little, too late.”

The $600-billion upfront investment necessary for the 100 reactors would slice out twice as much carbon pollution in that period if invested in clean energy, according to the report. And given the costs of running a power plant, clean energy could deliver five times as much progress per dollar in lowering pollution.

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