Original Message: ----------------- From: Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 22:27:45 +1000 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Brin-l Digest, Vol 377, Issue 3
On 02/05/2008, at 4:21 AM, Dan M wrote: > > Why do you think mainstream science is wrong on global warming? Why > do you > think people will willingly die before using nuclear power? >Just out of interest - what about the environmental costs of getting >and refining uranium ore? It's not like the deposits are in accessible >areas. Well, the richest deposits are located in wind areas of Australia, I understand that. And, domenstic US and Canadian production are inherently higher cost, due to the lower grade of the ore. But, I have a buddy working on a uraninium minining detector project in the US. The market for uranium has come out of the doldrums of the last 20+ years, so folks are actually looking now. Last year, the US, for example, used about 25-30 tons of uranium for its plants. Canada alone has proven reserves of about 180k tons. One reserve (McCrthur River) is extremely high grade (26%), so the total amount that needs to be mined to get the uranium is low. So, the local impact would be far lower than the present local impact of coal mining. I realize that the newly discovered, offline, Australian reserve is in a national park. Its reasonable to expect the utmost care to be taken in that area. But, given the fact that people haven't looked all that hard for uranium deposits, due to the low historical prices, it seems reasonable that we will signficantly increase the proven deposits when we look hard for uranium. So, it may be that we can choose to ignore deposits in National Parks, or to mine them in such a way that has minimal, temporary impact on the local environment. But, without a doubt, if we went to substitute reactors for coal plants we would see a net dip in environmental effects from mining alone. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com – Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft® Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
