Platinum is a very rare metal. Since the amount of "new" platinum on the world market is around only 150 tonnes annually (about 1/50th of world gold production), and demand is already outstripping this supply, it is debatable whether enough of it might be provided to fabricate the putative fantastic number of fuel cells that will be necessary to "burn" hydrogen for the purpose of fuelling vehicles under the regime of the "Hydrogen Economy", and this may prove yet another nail in the coffin of this increasingly unlikely future scenario. Significant reserves for platinum production are highly localised, and over 90% of the world's production is concentrated in only two regions of South Africa and in Russia. Even in relatively rich ores, the proportion of platinum is very small. As a rough guide, the amount of platinum in these ores is around 3 parts per million, which means that one tonne of ore needs to be mined and processed, in order to provide 3 grams of highly purified platinum, which is about enough to make a small engagement ring.
It is pressure on curbing environmental emissions that is responsible for much of the increase in demand for platinum which is employed in catalytic converters, and takes around 41% of the total market, almost exactly the same quantity as is used to make jewelry. It might seem obvious to solve this problem by simply producing more platinum, but this is far easier suggested than accomplished, since platinum mining and production is attended with considerable difficulties. Most platinum mining is carried out underground, although some open-cast mining does exist. The actual mining of the raw ore is highly labour-intensive, and miners use hand-held pneumatic drills to bore holes into which sticks of explosives are placed, and the ore is blasted out before being drawn-up to the surface. The ore is then crushed and milled and then concentrated using "froth flotation" technology. The flotation-concentrate is then dried and smelted in an electric furnace at temperatures above 1,500 degrees C. Base metals, such as copper, nickel and cobalt are separated at another refinery and the residues in which the "Platinum Group Metals" (PGM) are concentrated are processed to separate the PGM from gold and silver.
This is the most difficult part of the process, involving a combination of solvent extraction and ion-exchange techniques, and the metals are finally extracted into "aqua regia" (or a mixture of concentrated hydrochloric acid and chlorine gas) ultimately obtaining gold, platinum and palladium. There are significant environmental impacts from platinum mining and production, which include groundwater pollution and the release of sulphur dioxide, ammonia, chlorine and hydrogen chloride into the atmosphere. However, the industry is beginning to address some of these problems. Nevertheless, 6 kilograms of carbon are emitted during the process per gramme of platinum recovered, which equates to about 300 - 600 kg for a contemporary fuel-cell powered car. It is also worth mentioning that currently, one such car costs around half-a-million dollars (US) to produce, although undoubtedly that price tag will fall appreciably if the technology becomes more widely adopted. The above figure for carbon emissions incurred during platinum manufacture for fuel cells assumes that 50 - 100 grammes of platinum are needed for an average fuel-cell powered car, but the current industry target is to achieve a loading of 15 g per 70 kW engine, while the US DOE target is closer to 12 g per 70 kW engine.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that world production of platinum could be doubled (while acknowledging there is no certainty that it could) from 150 to 300 tonnes per year, thus providing an extra 150 tonnes to make fuel-cells from, simple arithmetic and the best possible scenario would suggest that 150 tonnes x 1000 kg x 1000 g/12 g = 12,500,000 such fuel cells might be fabricated each year. This of course must be compared with a world total of 700 million road vehicles. Certainly, platinum can be recycled to maintain the status quo number of cars, but it would take at least 700/12.5 = 56 years before all that fleet were replaced by hydrogen powered fuel cells, by which time the oil-age will essentially be long over.
Add-in the tremendous cost of building and supplying the hydrogen infrastructure, including the manufacture of hydrogen (which is not a fuel and must be synthesised from other raw materials), and the problem is enormous. Of course, energy must be provided to power the platinum production processes and to finally manufacture fuel cells, but to make hydrogen as well. So we need to agree, at the outset, as to which sources all this energy will come from. There will be only about half the world's present reserves of oil remaining in 15 years time (much of which is used as a chemical feedstock for industry apart from as a fuel), and we might by that stage have introduced 187.5 million fuel-cell based vehicles, which is only one fifth of the current oil-powered number of them. I suspect too, that trying to utilise the existing transportation infrastructure might be conceived as the better option over subscribing to a huge and untested new network, and may well take precedent over an expansion of the fuel cell/hydrogen industry essentially from scratch, especially in terms of the production and management of hydrogen itself.
Will we ever run out of platinum? I managed to find some figures suggesting that the world reserve of PGM is around 71,000 tonnes (close to the resource of 80,000 tonnes). Since the proportion of platinum to palladium (the main contenders) varies from place to place (i.e. it is about 2:1 in South Africa but 1:3 in Russia) I shall take a rough estimate that 50% of this is platinum. That gives us 35,500 x 1000 x 1000/12 = 3 billion cars worth! So, actually running out of platinum doesn't seem to be the problem, it is just providing all the energy for the isolation of the pure element, and to fabricate the fuel-cells ultimately, make the new cars, generate, store and transport the hydrogen etc., that is! However, even if we can get around all these problems and bring the technology on line, the total number of vehicles worldwide will likely be reduced to about one quarter of the current number at best, in 15 years, and using conventional fuel-cells, closer to 5 - 10%!
The more sensible option seems to be to generate biodiesel from algae (admittedly, also an untested technology on the very large scale), and burn that in efficient diesel engines, thus being able to exploit much of the existing transport infrastructure. It seems likely that there will be a cut in the level of transportation as the world oil production level falls, whatever alternatives we try to bring in its place, but just how much depends on our choice of technology and how quickly we act upon it.
Related Reading.
"U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2005 - Platinum-Group Metals."
"Platinum Today: Resources in South Africa."
http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/dynamic/question/view/11754
"Department for Transport - Platinum and hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles."
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environment/research/
Friday, March 30, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Peak Oil - the ratchet slips another notch.
There is a general agreement that most of the oil there is to be found has now been found, and the world is using it up at an inexorable rate. My understanding is there are around one trillion (one thousand billion) barrels remaining in known geological holdings, and we get through just over 30 billion barrels of oil each year: thus, simple arithmetic suggests there are about 33 years worth left. Growth in demand is relentless, not only from the West but in the form of ever more aggressive efforts from China and India, who are undergoing an unprecedented phase of industrial expansion. To maintain the pace of this will to convert a dominantly agrarian culture into a technologically underpinned (and hugely populous) society demands oil, and in colossal quantities, almost certainly for longer than 3 decades. Clearly, supplying greater quantities of oil, year on year to meet rising demand, will exhaust its finite supply more quickly, and most likely there are rather less than 30 years of it in hand. As I stress, even that figure is based on simple arithmetic and may prove reassuringly misleading.
An oil-well is not like a water-well, and it cannot similarly and simply be drained to bottom. How much oil can actually be extracted depends on many factors, especially the local geology which dictates the nature, and permeability of the rock that contains it. I have mentioned previously some speculations that less oil will be finally obtained even from the giant fields in Saudi, because the enhanced recovery methods used to match the enormous world thirst for oil have probably damaged the rock rendering it less permeable, and in consequence less of the total oil will finally flow out through it, toward mostly Western oil refineries. It is noteworthy too that something like 9 million barrels of oil are extracted per day from Saudi, and the resulting empty-volume is filled by 9 million barrels of water. Thus a considerable demand is placed on a secondary resource - water - in order to extract oil.
Modern exploration for petroleum is an accomplished technical procedure. Seismic measurements shot in a set of 3-D grid-lines will reveal structural differences within particular strata, or geologic/sedimentary basins, and hence show any significant oil prospects where drilling might prove worthwhile. Today, it is fair to say that there are precious few areas where exploration for petroleum cannot be performed with success, if regional seismic studies indicate there is a good chance of finding substantial petroleum fields, i.e. those which might yield 100 million barrels of oil or more. However, in spite of assiduous efforts by the oil companies of the world, only a few of the major fields promised by geologists were actually found. Those accessible oil reserves had all been recognised previously, and most of their major fields already located. The upshot is that while many major finds were made in the late 1960's, which new off-shore production technology had brought on-stream to bring the OPEC producers to heel in the mid-1970's, no new major oil provinces (producing between 7 and 35 billion barrels) have been discovered since 1980.
Advances in 3-D seismic measurements and horizontal-drilling techniques have enhanced the rate of oil-recovery from known fields, but they have not proved the existence of major new fields, and so the known oil reserves of the planet remain finite. There persist contradictions over figures for resources versus reserves, and the picture looks misguidedly rosy when all forms of oil are accounted for on a single balance sheet - namely all the oil in the ground, oil from tar sands, and even from putative (i.e. as yet non-existent) coal liquefaction plants. Use of either term depends on whose pocket is being dipped into: "resources" means "your" money, while "reserves" is "my" money. Hence oil "reserves" are those that are profitable, while "resources" (which include everything that might be flagged-up, even on theoretical grounds) may be less readily obtained at any sensible fiscal or energy costs. Put another way, conservative bankers will not lend money on "resources" - "reserves" yes!
There are various estimates as to when the peak in production ("Peak Oil") will come. Some are of the opinion that it has already happened, but other than optimistic projections from the oil industry itself, all predictions are that it will be around 2010 (i.e. in a couple of years from now). Beyond the peak, production will fall. The world currently runs mainly on the "sweet", "light crude" oil which is readily refined into fuel, and as the wells are drained further down, and the barrel (literally and metaphorically) is scraped to yield further supplies over time, the quality of that oil will fall too, meaning that the oil provided is of a dirtier, "heavier" kind that is more intensive in effort and energy to purify and refine - hence it will become more expensive, both on account of its quantity and its quality. Expressed alternatively its EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), which currently stands at about 8, will fall. Oil from tar sands has an EROEI of about 3.
The result may be a collapse of the world economy, after which the societies of many Western countries will begin to look like that in Russia. The West (United States especially) will find itself competing with China for every tanker of oil. This places the fulcrum of world stability firmly in the sands of the Middle East. The New York Times printed an article in their March 5, 2007 edition, "Oil innovations pump new life into old wells,"which essentially sent the message that new technology casts doubt on the threat or practical reality of peak oil. In support of this view, they note that production is "up" from the Kern River Field in California and Duri Field in Indonesia, and that the Means Field in Texas is expected to yield double the original estimates, all thanks to innovations in technology. However, what was not mentioned is the rapid decline in production rates of an ever increasing number of large fields. Overall production from California and Texas has fallen markedly, in spite of all the technology that has been thrown there to try and avert this outcome.
The broad picture is that supplies of oil worldwide from large conventional fields are falling. If we were to believe that there is 4.7 trillion barrels available as a resource - that would suggest there is around 150 years worth left to us. However, it is unlikely that most of that will ever become a "reserve", because the EROEI or simply the requisite quantities of gas and water etc. required to produce it cannot be met. The truth is that the world is beginning to run out of oil, an eventuality we must now confront and plan-for.
Related Reading.
(1) Energy Bulletin, "Peak Oil: What the media don't want you to know," and references and links appended there. http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=27170
(2) L.F. Ivanhoe, "Get Ready for Another Oil Shock", printed in The Futurist, January/February 1997. It is interesting to look back 10 years.
(3) C.J.Rhodes, previous articles in http://ergobalance.blogspot.com
An oil-well is not like a water-well, and it cannot similarly and simply be drained to bottom. How much oil can actually be extracted depends on many factors, especially the local geology which dictates the nature, and permeability of the rock that contains it. I have mentioned previously some speculations that less oil will be finally obtained even from the giant fields in Saudi, because the enhanced recovery methods used to match the enormous world thirst for oil have probably damaged the rock rendering it less permeable, and in consequence less of the total oil will finally flow out through it, toward mostly Western oil refineries. It is noteworthy too that something like 9 million barrels of oil are extracted per day from Saudi, and the resulting empty-volume is filled by 9 million barrels of water. Thus a considerable demand is placed on a secondary resource - water - in order to extract oil.
Modern exploration for petroleum is an accomplished technical procedure. Seismic measurements shot in a set of 3-D grid-lines will reveal structural differences within particular strata, or geologic/sedimentary basins, and hence show any significant oil prospects where drilling might prove worthwhile. Today, it is fair to say that there are precious few areas where exploration for petroleum cannot be performed with success, if regional seismic studies indicate there is a good chance of finding substantial petroleum fields, i.e. those which might yield 100 million barrels of oil or more. However, in spite of assiduous efforts by the oil companies of the world, only a few of the major fields promised by geologists were actually found. Those accessible oil reserves had all been recognised previously, and most of their major fields already located. The upshot is that while many major finds were made in the late 1960's, which new off-shore production technology had brought on-stream to bring the OPEC producers to heel in the mid-1970's, no new major oil provinces (producing between 7 and 35 billion barrels) have been discovered since 1980.
Advances in 3-D seismic measurements and horizontal-drilling techniques have enhanced the rate of oil-recovery from known fields, but they have not proved the existence of major new fields, and so the known oil reserves of the planet remain finite. There persist contradictions over figures for resources versus reserves, and the picture looks misguidedly rosy when all forms of oil are accounted for on a single balance sheet - namely all the oil in the ground, oil from tar sands, and even from putative (i.e. as yet non-existent) coal liquefaction plants. Use of either term depends on whose pocket is being dipped into: "resources" means "your" money, while "reserves" is "my" money. Hence oil "reserves" are those that are profitable, while "resources" (which include everything that might be flagged-up, even on theoretical grounds) may be less readily obtained at any sensible fiscal or energy costs. Put another way, conservative bankers will not lend money on "resources" - "reserves" yes!
There are various estimates as to when the peak in production ("Peak Oil") will come. Some are of the opinion that it has already happened, but other than optimistic projections from the oil industry itself, all predictions are that it will be around 2010 (i.e. in a couple of years from now). Beyond the peak, production will fall. The world currently runs mainly on the "sweet", "light crude" oil which is readily refined into fuel, and as the wells are drained further down, and the barrel (literally and metaphorically) is scraped to yield further supplies over time, the quality of that oil will fall too, meaning that the oil provided is of a dirtier, "heavier" kind that is more intensive in effort and energy to purify and refine - hence it will become more expensive, both on account of its quantity and its quality. Expressed alternatively its EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), which currently stands at about 8, will fall. Oil from tar sands has an EROEI of about 3.
The result may be a collapse of the world economy, after which the societies of many Western countries will begin to look like that in Russia. The West (United States especially) will find itself competing with China for every tanker of oil. This places the fulcrum of world stability firmly in the sands of the Middle East. The New York Times printed an article in their March 5, 2007 edition, "Oil innovations pump new life into old wells,"which essentially sent the message that new technology casts doubt on the threat or practical reality of peak oil. In support of this view, they note that production is "up" from the Kern River Field in California and Duri Field in Indonesia, and that the Means Field in Texas is expected to yield double the original estimates, all thanks to innovations in technology. However, what was not mentioned is the rapid decline in production rates of an ever increasing number of large fields. Overall production from California and Texas has fallen markedly, in spite of all the technology that has been thrown there to try and avert this outcome.
The broad picture is that supplies of oil worldwide from large conventional fields are falling. If we were to believe that there is 4.7 trillion barrels available as a resource - that would suggest there is around 150 years worth left to us. However, it is unlikely that most of that will ever become a "reserve", because the EROEI or simply the requisite quantities of gas and water etc. required to produce it cannot be met. The truth is that the world is beginning to run out of oil, an eventuality we must now confront and plan-for.
Related Reading.
(1) Energy Bulletin, "Peak Oil: What the media don't want you to know," and references and links appended there. http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=27170
(2) L.F. Ivanhoe, "Get Ready for Another Oil Shock", printed in The Futurist, January/February 1997. It is interesting to look back 10 years.
(3) C.J.Rhodes, previous articles in http://ergobalance.blogspot.com
Monday, March 26, 2007
China's Explores Ultra-Deep Drilling.
In southwestern Sichuan Province the drilling of a well 8,875 metres deep has begun, with the intention to explore an untapped underground oil and gas field. The project is underpinned with an investment of of 300 million yuan (almost 40 million US dollars); the drilling was commenced on March 20th in Mianzhu City and is expected to take 676 days to complete. The well is named "Chuanke No.1 Well", and according to Zhang Xiaopeng, who is the deputy chief engineer of Sinopec's southwest China oil and gas company, the first 100 metres have been drilled-out smoothly. It is hoped that by drilling this well, more will be learned about the distribution of oil and gas in the "ultra-deep stratum", which is the geological term for the stratum lying at depths greater than 7,000 metres. In April 2006, the discovery of the Pughang Gas Field, the largest ever located in China with a holding of 356 billion cubic metres, was announced by Sinopec in northeastern China.
In July 2006, the drilling of the "Tashen No. 1 Well" was completed in Tahe oilfield in the Tarim basin in northwest China, at 8,408 metres deep, but no gas was discovered there. It is hoped that the Chuanke No. 1 Well will provide a breakthrough in gas exploration in the ultra-deep stratum. Indeed, the drilling-rig that the Chinese are using is designed to drill as deep as 12,000 metres, which is close to the depth of the SG-3, drilled in 1989 down to 12,262 meters (7.6 miles), on the Kola Peninsular, in the far north of Russia. That borehole is usually referred to as "Kola", in fact the deepest of several that were made there.
In an effort to extend world oil supplies, many deep-sea drilling projects are being undertaken, for example in the Gulf of Mexico. China is also adopting this plan and PetroChina, which is the nation's major oil and gas producer, intends to spend 100 million yuan (13 million US dollars) in the spring of 2008 to drill its first deep-water well in the South China Sea. Offshore drilling involves particular problems and a large investment in different equipment than is employed for onshore operations, where PetroChina has considerable expertise. The well will be drilled near Xisha, which is an island located 280 km southeast of Hainan Island, and in waters 3,000 m deep. Since China does not as yet have its own deep-water drilling vessels, the offshore specialist CNOOC's sister firm, China Oilfield Services, has formed a collaboration with the Parent China National Offshore Oil Corp. to build a deep-water drilling-rig using Norwegian technology, at a cost of $600 million (US).
China's deep water is effectively virgin territory, and has attracted US and Canadian investors, including Husky Energy, who announced a major discovery of gas in deep waters of the South China Sea last July. In a separate enterprise, the capacity of the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline (which is owned equally by China national Petroleum Corp. and Kazakhstan's Kazmunaigaz) is planned to be doubled to provide 20 million tonnes of oil per year, and the expansion programme could begin in 2008.
India too has an interest in China's deep-sea exploration projects, since this is also a nation in an unprecedented phase of industrialisation and technological development, activities that are crucially underpinned by securing adequate supplies of oil and gas. To aid the common aims of these two great and populous nations, China is seeking close cooperation with India in the oil and gas industry. Wang Tao, senior vice-president of the World Petroleum Congress and also a former Chinese government minister, said: "We would like India to participate in our offshore and deep-sea projects and also explore jointly opportunities abroad." He further confirmed that, "plans for cooperation has the mandate from the Chinese president." Presumably this means "opportunities" in the Middle East, Africa and South America; clearly in competition with supplying the resource needs of The West.
Both countries are ramping-up world demand for petroleum to fuel their massive economic growth, and it makes sense that the two mighty eastern neighbours should support one another rather than entering into squabbles between themselves, especially when an East-West conflict over oil comes about - as it inevitably will, for a resource that is in decline. Then what, I wonder? It is interesting that the resource of military might is growing in the hands of The West (including the UK) and Russia, both of whom are revamping their nuclear arsenals. Recently, India came second place to China as a result of the latter's tough manoeuvres to claim a piece of Canada's PetroKazakhstan, with major activities is Kazakhstan, which is one of several examples where Indian and Chinese companies have been pitted against each other. On the other hand, a viable cooperation between India and China in the Greater Nile Project in Sudan was demonstrated by a consequently enhanced production of oil there.
Meeting the inexorable world demand for oil is a major challenge, and will become increasingly so as the world reserve declines. There is potentially a large resource of oil, if unconventional sources such as tar sands, shales and coal-liquefaction are included, but these sources are highly dependent on other resources, especially gas and water to recover them. It is debatable exactly how much of the acknowledged "trillion barrels" that remain in conventional oil-wells are really recoverable. In any event, the world is running out of cheap oil, and this may well precipitate East-West conflict, while it is debatable who will take who's side precisely out of the nations of the US, Europe, South America, Russia, and China-India. In any event, deep-drilling operations (in rock or deep-water) are a last resort for conventional oil and gas extraction and such worldwide investment as is ongoing can be heard as an alarm that the world needs to find alternatives sooner rather than too-late.
In July 2006, the drilling of the "Tashen No. 1 Well" was completed in Tahe oilfield in the Tarim basin in northwest China, at 8,408 metres deep, but no gas was discovered there. It is hoped that the Chuanke No. 1 Well will provide a breakthrough in gas exploration in the ultra-deep stratum. Indeed, the drilling-rig that the Chinese are using is designed to drill as deep as 12,000 metres, which is close to the depth of the SG-3, drilled in 1989 down to 12,262 meters (7.6 miles), on the Kola Peninsular, in the far north of Russia. That borehole is usually referred to as "Kola", in fact the deepest of several that were made there.
In an effort to extend world oil supplies, many deep-sea drilling projects are being undertaken, for example in the Gulf of Mexico. China is also adopting this plan and PetroChina, which is the nation's major oil and gas producer, intends to spend 100 million yuan (13 million US dollars) in the spring of 2008 to drill its first deep-water well in the South China Sea. Offshore drilling involves particular problems and a large investment in different equipment than is employed for onshore operations, where PetroChina has considerable expertise. The well will be drilled near Xisha, which is an island located 280 km southeast of Hainan Island, and in waters 3,000 m deep. Since China does not as yet have its own deep-water drilling vessels, the offshore specialist CNOOC's sister firm, China Oilfield Services, has formed a collaboration with the Parent China National Offshore Oil Corp. to build a deep-water drilling-rig using Norwegian technology, at a cost of $600 million (US).
China's deep water is effectively virgin territory, and has attracted US and Canadian investors, including Husky Energy, who announced a major discovery of gas in deep waters of the South China Sea last July. In a separate enterprise, the capacity of the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline (which is owned equally by China national Petroleum Corp. and Kazakhstan's Kazmunaigaz) is planned to be doubled to provide 20 million tonnes of oil per year, and the expansion programme could begin in 2008.
India too has an interest in China's deep-sea exploration projects, since this is also a nation in an unprecedented phase of industrialisation and technological development, activities that are crucially underpinned by securing adequate supplies of oil and gas. To aid the common aims of these two great and populous nations, China is seeking close cooperation with India in the oil and gas industry. Wang Tao, senior vice-president of the World Petroleum Congress and also a former Chinese government minister, said: "We would like India to participate in our offshore and deep-sea projects and also explore jointly opportunities abroad." He further confirmed that, "plans for cooperation has the mandate from the Chinese president." Presumably this means "opportunities" in the Middle East, Africa and South America; clearly in competition with supplying the resource needs of The West.
Both countries are ramping-up world demand for petroleum to fuel their massive economic growth, and it makes sense that the two mighty eastern neighbours should support one another rather than entering into squabbles between themselves, especially when an East-West conflict over oil comes about - as it inevitably will, for a resource that is in decline. Then what, I wonder? It is interesting that the resource of military might is growing in the hands of The West (including the UK) and Russia, both of whom are revamping their nuclear arsenals. Recently, India came second place to China as a result of the latter's tough manoeuvres to claim a piece of Canada's PetroKazakhstan, with major activities is Kazakhstan, which is one of several examples where Indian and Chinese companies have been pitted against each other. On the other hand, a viable cooperation between India and China in the Greater Nile Project in Sudan was demonstrated by a consequently enhanced production of oil there.
Meeting the inexorable world demand for oil is a major challenge, and will become increasingly so as the world reserve declines. There is potentially a large resource of oil, if unconventional sources such as tar sands, shales and coal-liquefaction are included, but these sources are highly dependent on other resources, especially gas and water to recover them. It is debatable exactly how much of the acknowledged "trillion barrels" that remain in conventional oil-wells are really recoverable. In any event, the world is running out of cheap oil, and this may well precipitate East-West conflict, while it is debatable who will take who's side precisely out of the nations of the US, Europe, South America, Russia, and China-India. In any event, deep-drilling operations (in rock or deep-water) are a last resort for conventional oil and gas extraction and such worldwide investment as is ongoing can be heard as an alarm that the world needs to find alternatives sooner rather than too-late.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Not Enough Uranium for Nuclear Expansion?
This is the conclusion of Thomas Heff, a research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who believes that the proposed escalation in the world's nuclear power facilities will lead to a shortfall in the quantities of fuel (mainly enriched uranium) necessary to run the reactors. He thinks that uranium "inventories" (reserves) are dwindling fast, and that there is a slackening in investment in securing future supplies, certainly in the face of proposed numbers of new nuclear plants to be inaugurated across the world. He said, "Just as large numbers of new reactors are being planned, we are only starting to emerge from 20 years of underinvestment in the production capacity for the nuclear fuel to operate them. There has been a nuclear industry myopia; they didn't take a long-term view."
I feel that this appraisal is a little disingenuous, since it ignores the fact that there was no "long-term view" possible for the nuclear industry. Since the early 1970's (and before, but the anti-nuclear movement gathered strength then), public opposition to nuclear power had been almost palpable. The explosion of the Unit 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 really seemed to ring-in the death-knell for this form of energy, and not only were there no plans (certainly in the West) to build more nuclear power stations, but a generalised opinion that the existing ones should be closed down. Although "Chernobyl" occurred within the reaches of the former USSR, Russia has to the best of my knowledge never been entirely anti-nuclear, probably because the communists were great fans of nuclear-power, and that resulting infrastructure based around nuclear would be extremely difficult to replace with alternative forms of power stations, especially in the lean economic times that have followed the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980's.
For example, in the Republic of Armenia, the controversial Metsamor nuclear power plant (NPP) has been subject to repeated and ongoing calls for its closure, and from countries as far afield as Austria. However, since the Armenian NPP produces close to half the country's electricity, to close it would impose considerable demands upon other resources. Much of the opposition to Metsamor is down to its location - on an earthquake fault line. When in 1988, much of northern Armenia was devastated by an earthquake, the NPP was closed over fears for its safety, but the result was an ecological calamity of such proportions that even some of the environmentalists called for its reopening, on the grounds that the devastation of the forests for firewood and the draining of the main freshwater lake Sevan for hydroelectric power were destroying the ecology of the region. Although the European Union has given various forms of aid to "encourage" Armenia to close Metsamor, and there are efforts to introduce a huge wind-farm and divert rivers for hydroelectric production, closing the NPP does not appear a reasonable option, at least not in the short term. I have a great affection for Armenia, and I have friends there, and I do fear for the future of this small land-locked country, which is entirely dependent on imported fuels - even uranium, flown-in from Russia to run the NPP - especially as world oil-supplies begin to dwindle. However, one might fear for many countries with limited indigenous reserves of natural oil and gas, which now includes the UK!
The final message from MIT is that if the world is to seriously expand its nuclear operations, then a huge injection of investment capital (and exploration and production engineering) will be necessary to garner the requisite nuclear fuels. In Russia, efforts to do precisely this appear to be already underway. It appears that Russia will shortly sign an agreement with Kazakhstan over an international uranium enrichment facility in East Siberia. Kazakhstan holds 15% of the world's known reserves of uranium, and so will be in a good position to supply the material for enrichment at the Angarsk plant, which is also intended to offer uranium enrichment services to other countries who wish to develop nuclear energy for civilian (i.e. non-military) purposes. I wonder if this will eventually include Iran, or will they instead persist in developing their own independent enrichment programme?
While there is undoubtedly a major issue of how quickly uranium might be brought into the enlarging marketplace that nuclear expansion will bring, this is surely underpinned by the matter of how much uranium there is in the world to be feasibly extracted, milled and fabricated into nuclear fuel rods. As a rough estimate, there are about 3 million tonnes of uranium as a known reserve. Assuming the world gets through 65,000 tonnes of it per year, that would equate to 3 x 10^6/65,000 = 46 years worth. However, this is a rather simplistic assumption, although it has been widely promulgated as evidence that nuclear has no future. Along these lines, if the current level of nuclear power were expanded to provide all the world's electricity the uranium would run out in under 10 years. However, reserves are not the same as resources, and as that existing uranium reserve becomes depleted, more of the resource will be mined and processed, even well below the 0.035% (350 parts per million) uranium concentration limit below which currently the resource is not considered economically worth including among the figures for the reserve. This is the uranium concentration found at the Rossing Mine in Namibia, which is regarded as low-grade ore. Since the energy cost of annually mining 3,000 tonnes of uranium from Rossing is 1 Petajoule of energy, and this much uranium can provide 15 Gigawatt-years of power (around 470 Petajoules) , the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) is close to 500.
The average concentration of uranium in the Earth's crust is around 2.7 parts per million, and soils associated with phosphate minerals can contain around 50 - 500 ppm of uranium. Some shales and phosphate rocks contain 10-20 ppm of uranium, and given their abundance, are estimated to contain a total quantity of uranium perhaps 8,000 times that of the rocks currently being explored. Even mining these very low-grade ores would allow the recovery of energy with an EROEI of 15-30. Hence, unlike conventional oil, it appears that a shortage of uranium per se, is not a problem. However, it may well be that the shortage of oil and gas used in the mining and processing of uranium is a problem, and that supplies of these other fuels will compete with the other purposes that society currently has for them, including electricity production, but mainly for transportation.
On a final note, the use of uranium in fission reactors is very wasteful, since it only uses about 0.5% of the total uranium (most of the uranium-238 and some of the uranium-235 is rejected by the uranium enrichment process). The majority of the material can be used in fast-breeder reactors but there are many objections to these on grounds of safely, whether real or perceived, and it is not helped that Dounreay with hardly the best of safety records, was a fast-breeder reactor. There was, as I recall, also a fire from the liquid sodium coolant in a fast breeder reactor in Japan. There are large reserves of thorium (about 1.2 million tonnes) known in minerals containing around 12% thorium; the mean abundance of thorium in the Earth's crust (around 8 ppm) is three times that of uranium, and since all the thorium can (must) be "bred" into uranium 233 as the fissile fuel, with many safety advantages over the uranium-238 to plutonium-239 "breeder" route, this could also be supplied in abundant amounts.
In principle, there is an abundance of nuclear fuel, but my fear is that we may run-out of the other resources needed to get hold of it first, e.g. gas and oil, unless some strategy is imposed that effectively makes the industry self-sustaining; for example if some of the electrical power produced from "nuclear" can be used to extract and process more of the uranium and thorium to feed the same purpose. Otherwise I don't see how there is "enough for thousands of years" if we end up without the means to tap into it. It takes resources to extract resources, and without an integrated plan, nuclear power may yet prove of only short-term benefit, however much uranium and thorium there is, and at whatever theoretical EROEI.
I feel that this appraisal is a little disingenuous, since it ignores the fact that there was no "long-term view" possible for the nuclear industry. Since the early 1970's (and before, but the anti-nuclear movement gathered strength then), public opposition to nuclear power had been almost palpable. The explosion of the Unit 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 really seemed to ring-in the death-knell for this form of energy, and not only were there no plans (certainly in the West) to build more nuclear power stations, but a generalised opinion that the existing ones should be closed down. Although "Chernobyl" occurred within the reaches of the former USSR, Russia has to the best of my knowledge never been entirely anti-nuclear, probably because the communists were great fans of nuclear-power, and that resulting infrastructure based around nuclear would be extremely difficult to replace with alternative forms of power stations, especially in the lean economic times that have followed the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980's.
For example, in the Republic of Armenia, the controversial Metsamor nuclear power plant (NPP) has been subject to repeated and ongoing calls for its closure, and from countries as far afield as Austria. However, since the Armenian NPP produces close to half the country's electricity, to close it would impose considerable demands upon other resources. Much of the opposition to Metsamor is down to its location - on an earthquake fault line. When in 1988, much of northern Armenia was devastated by an earthquake, the NPP was closed over fears for its safety, but the result was an ecological calamity of such proportions that even some of the environmentalists called for its reopening, on the grounds that the devastation of the forests for firewood and the draining of the main freshwater lake Sevan for hydroelectric power were destroying the ecology of the region. Although the European Union has given various forms of aid to "encourage" Armenia to close Metsamor, and there are efforts to introduce a huge wind-farm and divert rivers for hydroelectric production, closing the NPP does not appear a reasonable option, at least not in the short term. I have a great affection for Armenia, and I have friends there, and I do fear for the future of this small land-locked country, which is entirely dependent on imported fuels - even uranium, flown-in from Russia to run the NPP - especially as world oil-supplies begin to dwindle. However, one might fear for many countries with limited indigenous reserves of natural oil and gas, which now includes the UK!
The final message from MIT is that if the world is to seriously expand its nuclear operations, then a huge injection of investment capital (and exploration and production engineering) will be necessary to garner the requisite nuclear fuels. In Russia, efforts to do precisely this appear to be already underway. It appears that Russia will shortly sign an agreement with Kazakhstan over an international uranium enrichment facility in East Siberia. Kazakhstan holds 15% of the world's known reserves of uranium, and so will be in a good position to supply the material for enrichment at the Angarsk plant, which is also intended to offer uranium enrichment services to other countries who wish to develop nuclear energy for civilian (i.e. non-military) purposes. I wonder if this will eventually include Iran, or will they instead persist in developing their own independent enrichment programme?
While there is undoubtedly a major issue of how quickly uranium might be brought into the enlarging marketplace that nuclear expansion will bring, this is surely underpinned by the matter of how much uranium there is in the world to be feasibly extracted, milled and fabricated into nuclear fuel rods. As a rough estimate, there are about 3 million tonnes of uranium as a known reserve. Assuming the world gets through 65,000 tonnes of it per year, that would equate to 3 x 10^6/65,000 = 46 years worth. However, this is a rather simplistic assumption, although it has been widely promulgated as evidence that nuclear has no future. Along these lines, if the current level of nuclear power were expanded to provide all the world's electricity the uranium would run out in under 10 years. However, reserves are not the same as resources, and as that existing uranium reserve becomes depleted, more of the resource will be mined and processed, even well below the 0.035% (350 parts per million) uranium concentration limit below which currently the resource is not considered economically worth including among the figures for the reserve. This is the uranium concentration found at the Rossing Mine in Namibia, which is regarded as low-grade ore. Since the energy cost of annually mining 3,000 tonnes of uranium from Rossing is 1 Petajoule of energy, and this much uranium can provide 15 Gigawatt-years of power (around 470 Petajoules) , the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) is close to 500.
The average concentration of uranium in the Earth's crust is around 2.7 parts per million, and soils associated with phosphate minerals can contain around 50 - 500 ppm of uranium. Some shales and phosphate rocks contain 10-20 ppm of uranium, and given their abundance, are estimated to contain a total quantity of uranium perhaps 8,000 times that of the rocks currently being explored. Even mining these very low-grade ores would allow the recovery of energy with an EROEI of 15-30. Hence, unlike conventional oil, it appears that a shortage of uranium per se, is not a problem. However, it may well be that the shortage of oil and gas used in the mining and processing of uranium is a problem, and that supplies of these other fuels will compete with the other purposes that society currently has for them, including electricity production, but mainly for transportation.
On a final note, the use of uranium in fission reactors is very wasteful, since it only uses about 0.5% of the total uranium (most of the uranium-238 and some of the uranium-235 is rejected by the uranium enrichment process). The majority of the material can be used in fast-breeder reactors but there are many objections to these on grounds of safely, whether real or perceived, and it is not helped that Dounreay with hardly the best of safety records, was a fast-breeder reactor. There was, as I recall, also a fire from the liquid sodium coolant in a fast breeder reactor in Japan. There are large reserves of thorium (about 1.2 million tonnes) known in minerals containing around 12% thorium; the mean abundance of thorium in the Earth's crust (around 8 ppm) is three times that of uranium, and since all the thorium can (must) be "bred" into uranium 233 as the fissile fuel, with many safety advantages over the uranium-238 to plutonium-239 "breeder" route, this could also be supplied in abundant amounts.
In principle, there is an abundance of nuclear fuel, but my fear is that we may run-out of the other resources needed to get hold of it first, e.g. gas and oil, unless some strategy is imposed that effectively makes the industry self-sustaining; for example if some of the electrical power produced from "nuclear" can be used to extract and process more of the uranium and thorium to feed the same purpose. Otherwise I don't see how there is "enough for thousands of years" if we end up without the means to tap into it. It takes resources to extract resources, and without an integrated plan, nuclear power may yet prove of only short-term benefit, however much uranium and thorium there is, and at whatever theoretical EROEI.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Russia gives Iran Ultimatum over Enrichment?
Moscow has told Iran that it will hold back enriched uranium fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power station if the country refuses to end its uranium enrichment programme, in accord with demands from the United Nations Security Council. This ultimatum was given by the secretary of the Russian National Security Council, Igor Ivanov, to the Iranian deputy chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Hosseini Tash. The veracity of this report in the New York Times is however denied by Mr Tash, which is significant because he is also deputy secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, who said on state radio on Tuesday: "No, I deny this news and the situation was completely the other way round. Mr Ivanov was trying to convince us that these issued are not related" - meaning that there is no connection between the matter of providing nuclear fuel for Bushehr and the UN demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
The US State Department remains non-committal on the whole business, but "a senior European official" is quoted as saying, "We consider this a very important decision by the Russians (obviously believing the story). It shows that our disagreements with the Russians about the dangers of Iran's nuclear programme are tactical. Fundamentally the Russians don't want a nuclear Iran." If that is true, there may be a number of reasons for why not. Many people fear that if Iran persists in contravening the wishes of the UN, the US may impose sanctions against them or indeed resort to military action, thus effectively extending the war-zone from its neighbour, Iraq. How the world could impose sanctions on Iran, say in terms of refusing to buy its oil, is not easy to envisage especially in view of the unquenchable thirst for the oil from this, the world's fourth largest producer of the commodity, from both East and West. China probably would not join-in the imposition of any sanctions, which would remain a restriction for the West, unless the waterways for its carriage were blockaded from the US military bases that flank that particular region, which would affect all destination countries. Russia may just not want trouble on its own doorstep, or sanctions to overspill and affect its own markets, which buy some of Iran's oil too, although Russia is the world's second largest producer of oil.
The UN Security Council was expected to vote this week to impose new sanctions on Iran for continuing with its enrichment programme, which they fear will create heavily-enriched uranium (HEU) for fabrication into a nuclear warhead. Tehran denies this, and insists that the sole purpose of the programme is to provide nuclear fuel for electricity generation. Russia has previously offered to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian territory, which should appease the UN, but Iran appears intent on securing its own technology, and there might well be good, non-military reasons for that. I have read that Israel has missiles capable of destroying Iranian nuclear facilities, and were they to be deployed for that purpose, the whole situation in the Middle East could become extremely unfortunate, with no knowing the extent of its outcome.
In the last month, Russian officials have acknowledged that there was a delay in the supply of nuclear fuel into the port-city of Bushehr, for which they blamed a simple lack of payment from Iran, and nothing so complicated as the wider political agenda of nuclear proliferation. The story remains murky, however, since a report on The Times web site claims that Russia had confirmed in an interview that the fuel would only be delivered once Iran had frozen its enrichment of uranium.
Meanwhile, Russia is projected to build 3 new nuclear power plants, beginning in 2016, and four more starting around 2018-2020. Given the decline in oil-production that is expected to bite into world markets within a decade, this makes sense, among the expected new generation of "nuclear" that many nations, including the UK are discussing the inauguration of. The industry is expected to accelerate construction of nuclear power stations without funding from the central government, according to the head of the Federal Atomic Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, who is confident that costs for the enlargement of the nuclear power base can be borne at their own expense. He believes that the Russian atomic energy industry will become self-sustaining by 2015, following the injection by the government of 674 billion Rubles (£26 billion).
The US State Department remains non-committal on the whole business, but "a senior European official" is quoted as saying, "We consider this a very important decision by the Russians (obviously believing the story). It shows that our disagreements with the Russians about the dangers of Iran's nuclear programme are tactical. Fundamentally the Russians don't want a nuclear Iran." If that is true, there may be a number of reasons for why not. Many people fear that if Iran persists in contravening the wishes of the UN, the US may impose sanctions against them or indeed resort to military action, thus effectively extending the war-zone from its neighbour, Iraq. How the world could impose sanctions on Iran, say in terms of refusing to buy its oil, is not easy to envisage especially in view of the unquenchable thirst for the oil from this, the world's fourth largest producer of the commodity, from both East and West. China probably would not join-in the imposition of any sanctions, which would remain a restriction for the West, unless the waterways for its carriage were blockaded from the US military bases that flank that particular region, which would affect all destination countries. Russia may just not want trouble on its own doorstep, or sanctions to overspill and affect its own markets, which buy some of Iran's oil too, although Russia is the world's second largest producer of oil.
The UN Security Council was expected to vote this week to impose new sanctions on Iran for continuing with its enrichment programme, which they fear will create heavily-enriched uranium (HEU) for fabrication into a nuclear warhead. Tehran denies this, and insists that the sole purpose of the programme is to provide nuclear fuel for electricity generation. Russia has previously offered to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian territory, which should appease the UN, but Iran appears intent on securing its own technology, and there might well be good, non-military reasons for that. I have read that Israel has missiles capable of destroying Iranian nuclear facilities, and were they to be deployed for that purpose, the whole situation in the Middle East could become extremely unfortunate, with no knowing the extent of its outcome.
In the last month, Russian officials have acknowledged that there was a delay in the supply of nuclear fuel into the port-city of Bushehr, for which they blamed a simple lack of payment from Iran, and nothing so complicated as the wider political agenda of nuclear proliferation. The story remains murky, however, since a report on The Times web site claims that Russia had confirmed in an interview that the fuel would only be delivered once Iran had frozen its enrichment of uranium.
Meanwhile, Russia is projected to build 3 new nuclear power plants, beginning in 2016, and four more starting around 2018-2020. Given the decline in oil-production that is expected to bite into world markets within a decade, this makes sense, among the expected new generation of "nuclear" that many nations, including the UK are discussing the inauguration of. The industry is expected to accelerate construction of nuclear power stations without funding from the central government, according to the head of the Federal Atomic Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, who is confident that costs for the enlargement of the nuclear power base can be borne at their own expense. He believes that the Russian atomic energy industry will become self-sustaining by 2015, following the injection by the government of 674 billion Rubles (£26 billion).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)