Nuclear Power Dossier
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Nuclear
Power Dossier - Uranium Mining and Milling Remote, unregulated
and...running out. Why the business of fuelling nuclear power can't
give us energy sovreignty
Author:Jon
Hughes
Once construction
is under way, the business of sourcing uranium to fuel the reactor
starts. The problem is that uranium doesn't sit neatly in the ground
in ready-to-use packages, it has to be mined and milled both
environmentally destructive processes. While the element is found everywhere
on earth, geological surveys show that most deposits of
uranium are found in concentrations of about 0.02-0.01 percent (200-100g per
tonne of rock).
This means
that
round 9,800 tonnes of rock has to be mined and milled to give up one tonne
of uranium. A standard 100mw/eh nuclear reactor requires in the region
of 160 tonnes of uranium fuel processed from around 16 million
tonnes of rock each year. At these levels of concentration, mining
and milling uranium is uneconomic and uses more energy to recover than
it will ultimately produce.
Uranium is
taken
from the earth like any other raw material: blasted and dug from open
pits, causing thousands of tonnes of radioactive rock to be disturbed,
the dust of which finds its way into water, plants, animals, fish
and humans for hundreds of miles around. Sometimes these pits
can be 250 metres deep. When they are, polluted surface water has to
be pumped away from the mine to keep it operational, further
contaminating local water supplies.
Worse is
to come
at the mill, which is a chemical plant by another name. Here huge
diesel-powered machines crush the rock into a more manageable size ready
for leaching. In most cases, sulphuric acid is used as the primary
leaching agent. As this not only extracts uranium from the ore, but
also several other constituents like molybdenum, vanadium, selenium,
iron, lead and arsenic, the uranium must be separated out of the
leaching solution. The final product from the mill, commonly
referred to as 'yellowcake', is packed in casks ready to be shipped to the
purchaser.
The
leaching
process only ever extracts around 90 per cent of the uranium, the rest
remains in the waste rock, which is known as tailings. Sometimes
leaching takes place 'in situ'. This involves pumping hundreds of
tonnes of sulphuric acid, nitric acid, ammonia and other chemicals into
the rock strata and then pumping it up again after some 5 to
25 years. In situ leaching is fast becoming the industry's preferred
method because it is cheaper. But it is also wasteful, yielding
only about a quarter of the uranium from the treated rocks. The end
result is the same vast amounts of radioactive and toxic
metals are dumped into the local environment and aquifers.
Dumping
the waste
The
uranium mill
tailings are normally dumped as a sludge in special ponds or piles, where
they are abandoned. The largest such piles in the US and Canada
contain up to 30 million tonnes of solid material.In Saxony, Germany,
the Helmsdorf pile near Zwickau contains 50 million tonnes, and in
Thuringia, the Culmitzsch pile near Seelingst?dt has 86
million tonnes.
The amount
of
sludge produced is nearly the same as that of the ore milled; at a grade of
0.1 per cent uranium, 99.9 per cent of the mined rock is left over.
This contains all the constituents of the ore and 85 per cent of its
initial radioactivity, as long-lived decay products such as thorium-230
and radium-226 are not removed, and up to 10 per cent of the uranium is
never captured. In addition, the sludge contains heavy metals
and other contaminants, such as arsenic, and residual chemical
agents used during the milling process.
Mining and
milling removes hazardous constituents in the ore from their relatively safe
underground location and converts them to a fine sand, making the
hazardous materials more susceptible to dispersion in the environment.
By rights
this
waste should be treated: the acids should be neutralised with
limestone and made insoluble with phosphates; the mine floor should be
sealed with clay before the treated tailings are put back into it; the
overburden should be replaced and the area should be replanted
with indigenous vegetation. In practice, all this
is rarely
done.
It is expensive, and according to Ceedata, a renowned environmental
consultancy, it also requires approximately four times the amount of energy
that was needed to extract the ore in the first place.
The
cavalier
regulation of mines has been cruelly exposed. In the 1980s in America,
highly radioactive tailings were used in building homes, dramatically
increasing the cancer rate amongst the inhabitants. Similar
abuses have taken place in Eastern Siberia in the 1990s. As mines are
often found in remote locations, so they are almost impossible to
police and regulate. And just as unscrupulous builders can use the
tailings, so, too, could the potentially lethal yellowcake fall into
the wrong hands.
The
Navajo legacy
Having
experienced the mining and milling process first hand, the Navajo nation has
said, 'Never again'. They know from experience what a poisonous business
it is. In the 1950s, uranium mines were opened across the Navajo
nation, leaving a legacy the current tribal president Joe Shirley
Jr describes as 'genocide'. Dozens of premature deaths of Navajo
miners and passed-on genetic defects have been attributed to uranium
exposure from that time.
'You look
around
the reservation and see so many elderly people who are crippled and can
barely breathe,' said Robert Stewart Sr, a Navajo who worked for five
years in a mine in the mid- to late 1950s. 'This pretty much devastated
much of a generation.'
Navajo
chiefs
have understandably outlawed a return of mining to their reservation, which
covers 27,000 square miles across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Hydro
Resources
Inc, however, is expected to fight the ban. The mining company says there are
nearly 50,000 tonnes of uranium reserves on the reservation, which
they want to mine using the in-situ leaching method.
Around the
world
there is a backlash against uranium mining. Australia has the largest
deposits of uranium ore in the world, with 40 per cent of an identified 3.5
million tonnes enough, the industry say, to fuel current world
nuclear capacity for another 45-50 years.
Opposition
to
this environmentally destructive business has restricted companies
in Australia to mining just 10 per cent of the reserves and the
Australian government has just awarded the Aboriginal owners and Kakadu
national park the right to veto mining there, setting a precedent
for the Northern Territories where most of the
country's
reserves of ore are.
There is,
however, a more pressing problem for industry. Uranium is a finite fuel and it is
running out. Nuclear power currently generates 2.5 per cent of the
world's electricity supply. In industrialized countries, such as the
UK, US and Japan, nuclear generates in the region of 17-20 per
cent of electricity. All these countries are
talking
about
increasing their nuclear capacity. The government's chief scientist Sir
David King has talked about doubling capacity in the UK, to around 30
per cent. Japan envisages building another 30 reactors, the US
around 10-15. If nuclear capacity doubles in size, then the ore is going
to run out in 20 years.
Under such
circumstances there is no guaranteed price stability. The spot market price has
risen 600 per cent in the past four years amid talk that nuclear
capacity is to double in size.
In turn
there
will be no security of supply. Outside of Australia the other 60 per cent of
the world's reserves of ore are, in order of size, divided between
Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, the Russian
Federation, America, and Uzbekistan. As a uranium shortage looms, it is
unlikely that nuclear nations such as America, Russia and Canada will
sell their uranium, which means the UK will be reliant on supplies
from less stable sources. Having made such a capital investment in
nuclear, we would be a hostage to fortune. Creating an
electricity supply around a fuel that is known to be running out gives us
no greater energy sovereignty than we would get from relying on the
Middle East for oil or Russia for gas.
Understandably,
the nuclear industry is seeking to assure its potential markets that
any uranium shortage will be addressed. To that end it has been
looking at alternative sources: notably, extracting uranium from granite
and seawater. Both are fantastical.
Granite
has an
average uranium content of four grams per tonne. Ceedata say the
process would use 30 times more energy to extract the uranium than it would
eventually produce.
Seawater
is
promoted as another option. This involves using nets in the ocean to fish for
uranium, and a five stage chemical process to clean, separate and
prepare it for use. The process is so complicated that it would take
three times as much energy to source as it would eventually produce and
involve the use of highly-polluting chemicals.
The other
hope is
that fast-breed reactors will come on stream. These are reactors that
create their own fuel while they generate electricity. It was
the promise of this technology that led to the claim 50 years ago
that nuclear power would generate electricity 'too cheap to meter'. The
problem is that fast-breed reactors have never
worked.
'Breeding'
involves three complex operations working in conjunction: breeding, reprocessing
and fuel fabrication, which has never been achieved. The process
causes waste that clogs and corrodes the equipment undertaking
it. There are three fast-breed reactors in the world: Beloyarsk-3 in
Russia, Monju in Japan and Phenix in France. Monju and Phenix have
long been out of operation; Beloyarsk is still operating, but it has
never bred.
Nevertheless, the
nuclear industry still believes fast breed technology holds the
answer to future electricity supply, using thorium as a fuel.
Ceedata estimates this technology, which relies on uranium and plutonium
as a start-up fuel, could theoretically double in size every 40
years. So if we use uranium and plutonium to fire up
two
thorium
reactors today, in 40 years they would have made enough fuel to start another
two. This accepts the technology is ready, which it is not. The most
optimistic forecast is that this technology might be ready in 20 years.
All the
while,
greenhouse gas emissions will be being released into the atmosphere. A 1998
study for the Canadian nuclear industry found that for every unit
of usable uranium recovered, 20 units of C02 are released into the
atmosphere. This figure is generous to the industry, as it is based on
extracting particularly high grades of uranium, of around one per cent.
As most
deposits
of uranium in the world are found in concentrations of about 0.02 per cent
or less, the true picture is far more corrosive. According
to Ceedata, as soon as it becomes necessary to mine ores of below
100g per tonne, more C02 is emitted into the atmosphere than any
emissions savings a nuclear power station could
make over
a
24-year generating life.
