Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand - also called the "Red Book" - estimates the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years.
However, world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million tonnes is available for exploitation...
...In the longer term, continuing advances in nuclear technology will allow a substantially better utilisation of the uranium resources. Reactor designs are being developed and tested that are capable of extracting more than 30 times the energy from the uranium than today´s reactors.
By 2025, world nuclear energy capacity is expected to grow to between 450 GWe (+22%) and 530 GWe (+44%) from the present generating capacity of about 370 GWe. This will raise annual uranium requirements to between 80 000 tonnes and 100 000 tonnes. The currently identified resources are adequate to meet this expansion...
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.htmlIn my view, this increase in capacity is much smaller than what
should be the goal. Currently nuclear energy provides about 30 exajoules of primary energy. The increase now expected would not be sufficient to eliminate coal by this time. I believe that all coal generated electricity should be replaced by nuclear energy in a crash construction campaign that is international, as the emergency
demands.
However, on the bright side, I note that many people a few years ago were predicting a nuclear phase-out, something which, under the current conditions would be clearly absurd.
Note that the recoverable resources are weighted at $130/kg. Above $200/kg the recovery of uranium from seawater probably becomes economic.
It is almost certainly the case that the advanced fuel cycles now under development will further increase the availability of nuclear fuel even
without the addition of fast reactor technology.
Note also that the article makes little mention of thorium based fuel cycles. I predict that thorium based fuel will dominate the nuclear industry by the middle of the current century in the increasingly unlikely case that the bulk of humanity survives global climate change.
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