For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:42 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
I think perhaps our apparent disagreement comes from what we each mean by the terms we use. Could you please spell out for me exactly what you mean when you say "unsustainable"?
Tanada, by "sustainable" I mean able to be sustained. Note that there is no time limit expressed or implied. Of course, nothing can be sustained for ever but sustainable, to me, means that one cannot clearly see an end to the behaviour, resource, or whatever. It means only using resources up to their renewal rate or reducing the use of a resource to its renewal rate (for effectively non renewable resources, it means reducing that use to zero). Richard Heinberg distilled sustainability into a number of axioms, here, and they seem like a reasonable definition.
As we've seen what doing the opposite leads to, I can't see why continuing down that road would be a good thing to do.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:45 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
MonteQuest wrote:
Tanada wrote:
In that case perhaps you should read NEA 2006 where four scientists at the Nuclear Energy Association reveiw 40 years of Uranium supply and demand. They seem quite confident that any supply shortfall will be avoided even with a new build program taking off in the 2010's.
This seems to be their best argument.
Quote:
Since 2001, exploration expenditures have steadily increased as they follow the market price upward from historic lows. It can be expected that this new period of exploration will result in the discovery of new sources of uranium and an increased resource base.
And this:
Quote:
Taken together, the lessons of the past provide confidence that uranium resources will remain adequate to meet demand.
It can be expected?
Seems I have heard this rap before??? I think it went like this:
Since 2001, exploration expenditures have steadily increased as they follow the market price upward from historic lows. It can be expected that this new period of exploration will result in the discovery of new sources of oil and an increased resource base. Taken together, the lessons of the past provide confidence that oil resources will remain adequate to meet demand.
As I said, they could be wrong because past preformance does not garuntee future results, however given that the WNA which you cited earlier predicts world primary Uranium production will rise to 70,000t per annum by 2020 for their reference case I have confidence in the NEA projection.
The projected growth from WNA nearly doubles current primary production and in the high case it more than doubles current primary production. That alone indicates they beleive that exploration and new mining locations will add substantially to current resources being exploited. This is analogus to Y2K, a bunch of people shouted from the rooftops about the possible problems, people invest time, money and skilled labor to avoid those problems and when Y2K turned over very very few problems occured because they had been avoided. WNA is doing the shouting, saying we might still end up with a shortfall. In 15 years we will know if their warning was enough to elicit the additional investment of time, money and skilled labor to avoid the shortfall they are stating is a possibillity. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:05 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
TonyPrep wrote:
Tanada wrote:
I think perhaps our apparent disagreement comes from what we each mean by the terms we use. Could you please spell out for me exactly what you mean when you say "unsustainable"?
Tanada, by "sustainable" I mean able to be sustained. Note that there is no time limit expressed or implied. Of course, nothing can be sustained for ever but sustainable, to me, means that one cannot clearly see an end to the behaviour, resource, or whatever. It means only using resources up to their renewal rate or reducing the use of a resource to its renewal rate (for effectively non renewable resources, it means reducing that use to zero). Richard Heinberg distilled sustainability into a number of axioms, here, and they seem like a reasonable definition.
As we've seen what doing the opposite leads to, I can't see why continuing down that road would be a good thing to do.
Thank you for the link, Axiom 4 comes closest to what I mean when I say Uranium is sustainable. No it won't be around forever, but there is so much of it availible that it will be around for a long time. That time interval gives us the opertunity to have human population decline to a more intelligent level without mass rapid die off. It also gives us plenty of time to develop either a wood/bio-mass powered culture or something we havn't thought of yet. So long as we use mass manufacturing for solar cells they are not sustainable, it takes a lot of energy to build, maintain and operate a plant to make solar cells. By that defenition solar energy is sustained, solar PV cells are unsustainable. The same goes for wind turbines, they only last so long before they break. If you canot run the machinery to make the replacement parts sustainably then the whole system is unsustainable.
IOW when you can use Solar PV power to run all of the extraction and production machinery to make Solar PV cells and you can do so a a rate that allows replacement of the equipment as it wears out as well as PV cells as they wear out, only then will solar PV really be sustainable. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:46 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
Moral rightness is the product of a full belly.
I disagree 100% with this statement. Moral relativism like this implies that it is OK to kill and eat your neighbor if you are starving because what is right is situational instead of absolute.
I guess that one just went right over your head. I wasn' t making any moral statement, I was merely observing that morals don't arise when the belly is empty.. As William Stanton observed:
Quote:
Probably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world’s unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless.
Our devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life is born of a full belly. We have developed these notions as a result of having full bellies.
Nature doesn't give a rat's ass if you are morally right or not. It has nothing to with survival. In fact, our sense of what is right is one of our greatest weaknesses and threatens our survivval as a species. We won't choose from the right-hand column of choices...the one nature chooses from to correct imbalances. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:07 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
Everyone disagree's on what the carrying capacity of the planet is for Human's.
Perhaps, but there is little disagreement amongst the leading pherologists, whose job it is to study carrying capacity, that 2 to 3 billion people seems to be the sustainable population.
Quote:
Ecologists, economists and other scientists and policy makers from all over the world have attempted to estimate the human carrying capacity of the planet. The results vary dramatically depending on the methods used and the assumptions made. The variety of methods employed and assumptions made result in a broad range of estimates varying from as low as fewer than one billion people to as high as 1,000 billion. This paper compiles numerous recent estimates of socially sustainable carrying capacity into a single compendium and investigates the estimates of carrying capacity resulting from methods utilizing energy consumption and production as a metric for estimation.
The estimates vary from 0.5 to 14 billion depending on the metric used and the standard of living and technological improvements that are assumed. The medians of the low and high estimates provide a range from 2.1 to 5.0 billion people. With the current Earth population estimated to be 6.1 billion people,24 the median range of sustainable carrying capacity estimates suggests that the Earth's population be reduced in order to be sustainable.
Using standards of living lower than the current North American average, estimates of carrying capacity using energy as a metric range from 1 to 3 billion people. This is less than half of the current global population.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:13 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
Axiom 4 comes closest to what I mean when I say Uranium is sustainable.
Not very close though, unless the use declines in proportion to the depletion rate. Axiom 4 is:
Quote:
4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.
The rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a specified time interval (usually a year) as a percentage of the amount left to extract.
This means that, starting from now, our use of uranium should decline. That might include new build, as other plants are decommissioned, but there needs to be a definite strategy to move to sustainability with all power sources.
Quote:
IOW when you can use Solar PV power to run all of the extraction and production machinery to make Solar PV cells and you can do so a a rate that allows replacement of the equipment as it wears out as well as PV cells as they wear out, only then will solar PV really be sustainable.
I guess I'd agree with that. I suppose other sustainable energy sources (e.g. methane from cow dung) could be used primarily to maintain solar and wind. The energy mix, as a whole, needs to be sustainable. But that's probably nit-picking.
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
As I said, they could be wrong because past preformance does not garuntee future results, however given that the WNA which you cited earlier predicts world primary Uranium production will rise to 70,000t per annum by 2020 for their reference case I have confidence in the NEA projection.
That isn't production, that is demand. The 50,000t, 70,000t and 82, 000t are demand scenarios, not production. If demand doesn't exceed 50,000t, there will be no shortage of uranium.
How many times do I have to clarify this for you?
Read it slowly and closely. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:41 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
MonteQuest wrote:
Tanada wrote:
Everyone disagree's on what the carrying capacity of the planet is for Human's.
Perhaps, but there is little disagreement amongst the leading pherologists, whose job it is to study carrying capacity, that 2 to 3 billion people seems to be the sustainable population.
Not that it means anything but I could see 2-3 billion being a sustainable human population without causing massive ecological destruction and it would allow the ecosystem as a whole to recover IMO. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:48 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
TonyPrep wrote:
Tanada wrote:
Axiom 4 comes closest to what I mean when I say Uranium is sustainable.
Not very close though, unless the use declines in proportion to the depletion rate. Axiom 4 is:
Quote:
4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.
The rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a specified time interval (usually a year) as a percentage of the amount left to extract.
This means that, starting from now, our use of uranium should decline. That might include new build, as other plants are decommissioned, but there needs to be a definite strategy to move to sustainability with all power sources.
That's why I said closest but not spot on. To me sure, it isn't ultimately sustainable because it will run out some day. However given the size of the resource it is like saying you should never use Petroleum seeps as axle grease, which was the main use the Roman Empire had for the stuff. If you only use .01% of a resource each year then you will have plenty of time to figure out an alternative. If you use 1% per year you do not have nearly as long and if your average is is 2% (like we use Petroleum averaged over the last 25 years) then your time grows short quickly.
By the Axiom 4 defenition of sustainable all minerals even workable rock for stone tools becomes unsustainable. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:47 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
MonteQuest wrote:
As William Stanton observed:
Quote:
Probably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world’s unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless.
Our devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life is born of a full belly. We have developed these notions as a result of having full bellies.
Nature doesn't give a rat's ass if you are morally right or not. It has nothing to with survival. In fact, our sense of what is right is one of our greatest weaknesses and threatens our survivval as a species. We won't choose from the right-hand column of choices...the one nature chooses from to correct imbalances.
By that standard you also have to say Nature doesn't give a rat's ass how deep we go into overshoot, or how many ecosystems we disrupt/destroy in the process, because Nature will evolve replacements to fill the empty niches in the future. For myself I find that stance morally reprehensible, there is no excuse for a being capable of cognitive thought destroying the ecosystem.
We would do well to realize as the top preadator that over hunting/fishing and over expansion will be detrimental to not only our own generation but future generations as well. I am not an advodcate of keeping every super specialized species alive, nature red of tooth and claw eliminates such species on a regular basis, but the destruction of a species like the passenger pigeon is very different than a species of fish that can only like in specialized conditions in one stream or pond because they are super specialized for conditions specific to that location. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
MonteQuest wrote:
Tanada wrote:
As I said, they could be wrong because past preformance does not garuntee future results, however given that the WNA which you cited earlier predicts world primary Uranium production will rise to 70,000t per annum by 2020 for their reference case I have confidence in the NEA projection.
That isn't production, that is demand. The 50,000t, 70,000t and 82, 000t are demand scenarios, not production. If demand doesn't exceed 50,000t, there will be no shortage of uranium.
How many times do I have to clarify this for you?
Read it slowly and closely.
If I can get the image thingy to work I will show you the WNA graph, it is labled EXPECTED WORLD URANIUM PRODUCTION CAPACITY, 2005-2030, tU. This is not a Demand projection, it is a PRODUCTION projection Monte, perhaps you need to read more carefully before accusing others of being mistaken?
It is page 21 of 28 on this WNA graph, if a mod would be so kind as to post the graph I would appreciate it, I can't seem to get it to work for me.
This is the web page that started this whole portion of the thread and has lead to the disagreement over projected consequences, if you misread it way back as a demand projection instead of a supply projection then your stance makes a hell of a lot more sense than it did during this discussion. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 3:56 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
That's why I said closest but not spot on. To me sure, it isn't ultimately sustainable because it will run out some day. However given the size of the resource it is like saying you should never use Petroleum seeps as axle grease, which was the main use the Roman Empire had for the stuff. If you only use .01% of a resource each year then you will have plenty of time to figure out an alternative. If you use 1% per year you do not have nearly as long and if your average is is 2% (like we use Petroleum averaged over the last 25 years) then your time grows short quickly.
By the Axiom 4 defenition of sustainable all minerals even workable rock for stone tools becomes unsustainable.
Now you're getting it. You're right, though, about using any amount of a finite resource being unsustainable. Of course, life is all about compromises. As you've already pointed out, nothing is sustainable but we could probably all agree that if the resource can be made to last for a few million years, then we could regard it as sustainable. If we can get down to a very low use of stone tools (assuming, for the moment, that that was all we could use for tools), then we could regard that as so close to 0% of the resource base that it can be thought of as 0%.
Unfortunately, there seem to be many estimates of the recoverable resource base for uranium. I suppose you could believe that it is enormous and so we can safely use any amount without noticeably depleting that recoverable resource. Many would disagree with that belief, which hasn't been proven, so wouldn't you think that it would be better to go with an agreed lowest level and base future use on that level? What I think we should be aiming for is sustainability and we are far more likely to reach it by making pessimistic assumptions about resource sizes and renewal rates.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:06 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Tanada wrote:
By that standard you also have to say Nature doesn't give a rat's ass how deep we go into overshoot, or how many ecosystems we disrupt/destroy in the process, because Nature will evolve replacements to fill the empty niches in the future. For myself I find that stance morally reprehensible
I'm not sure what you're saying here, Tanada. Nature's "stance" is amoral, not imoral. Nature doesn't give a rat's ass, because it can't, not because it consciously doesn't care. If you were suggesting that Monte is justifying human destruction of the ecosystem because nature doesn't care, then I think you may have misunderstood Monte's position (assuming that I haven't).
Tanada wrote:
We would do well to realize as the top preadator that over hunting/fishing and over expansion will be detrimental to not only our own generation but future generations as well.
Now I'm a little more confused. I thought your concern was only for a small number of generations (up to 100 years), in the discussion about sustainable uranium use. From this comment it seems that you're more in tune with my concern for a lot more generations to come.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:56 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
TonyPrep wrote:
Tanada wrote:
By that standard you also have to say Nature doesn't give a rat's ass how deep we go into overshoot, or how many ecosystems we disrupt/destroy in the process, because Nature will evolve replacements to fill the empty niches in the future. For myself I find that stance morally reprehensible
I'm not sure what you're saying here, Tanada. Nature's "stance" is amoral, not imoral. Nature doesn't give a rat's ass, because it can't, not because it consciously doesn't care. If you were suggesting that Monte is justifying human destruction of the ecosystem because nature doesn't care, then I think you may have misunderstood Monte's position (assuming that I haven't).
Tanada wrote:
We would do well to realize as the top preadator that over hunting/fishing and over expansion will be detrimental to not only our own generation but future generations as well.
Now I'm a little more confused. I thought your concern was only for a small number of generations (up to 100 years), in the discussion about sustainable uranium use. From this comment it seems that you're more in tune with my concern for a lot more generations to come.
For number 1, Nature is Amoral, I however beleive humans who act on natural impulse alone without considering the consequences to be Immoral. I know, at least I think I know that Monte doesn't want humanity to destroy nature, which is why I found his statement about morals proceeding from a full belly to be puzzling. The only way to fill your belly is to extract resources from the world around you, done properly (morally to me) you do the least harm you can to the ecosystem in the process while maintaining a healthy food supply for your population. The smart humans should aim for a world population of 3 Billion or less to make this easier to accomplish. I think Earth could support 9 Billion humans or more, but to do so would cause much ecosystem strain and/or loss.
For Number 2, you are mixing up the two themes recently discussed in this thread, I look out 100+ years and beleive Uranium will remain a viable energy source for humanity over that time scale, I look out over as far as I can imagine and wish to keep ecosystems on Earth as vibrant and diverse as possible. One is my short term veiw, the other is my long term view. I do not believe that they are mutually exclusive, on the contrary I think switching off coal electric power plants as fast as we can build fission power plants to replace them would be very beneficial to the ecosystem.
Is that as clear as mud or what? _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Last edited by Tanada on Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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