This is the home page of a throroughly revised version of a website first placed on the web in 2002. In this revision the presentation of the analysis of nuclear energy has been arranged in a more orderly fashion and we hope a more understandable form than the original. While the end results, summarized below, are quantitatively somewhat diffferent than in the original version (the most important changes are pointed out where they have been made in the texts of the different chapters), the qualitative conclusions are unchanged. They are:
The production of electricity by nuclear reactors, as long as rich uranium ores are still available, leads to considerably less CO2-emission than does the use of fossil fuels for the purpose. In the course of time, as the rich ores become exhausted and poorer and poorer ores are perforce used, continuing use of nuclear reactors for electricity generation will finally result in the production of more CO2 than if fossil fuels were to be burned directly. In this revision we have given, in Chapter 2, a complete, up-to-date overview of all of the known or presumed uranium ore bodies, and the amount of net energy that burning them would deliver. In our original website we had estimated that using these resources to exhaustion would provide only three years of electrical energy at the present world rate of electricity use. In this revision, this estimate has been raised to about four years, partly because the data on the reserves is much more complete than it was a few years ago.
These are the salient results of the research reported on this website.The technical background of these is presented in an introduction and five chapters which can o be downloaded for study from the table of contents below.
The remarkable conclusion of this research might prompt one to ask how it was possible that an entire energy industry was built up when in fact, using all available resources, it could only provide such a small amount of electrical power. There are two reasons that may explain this remarkable fact, one arising from unrealistic, and easy to refute, assumptions concerning the (energetic) yield of nuclear power and the other on an (up to the present) unjustified technological optimism.
The first is that the full energy content of the 0.71% 235U in natural uranium could be converted into electricity (with essentially no losses, except for the unavoidable loss when heat energy is converted into electrical energy). As our calculations show, this is a far cry from reality. The magnitude of the costs of this conversion become clear when the energy costs of energy production are taken into account. These costs are discussed qualitatively in the various chapter of the document. Without going into details at this point, we mention that the largest unavoidable energy cost is that of mining and milling the uranium ores. To calculate this we use only the data on these processes provided by the industry itself. The rich ores that are at present exploited need very little energy for exploitation, but the useful energy content of these ores is quite small (under the assumption that only the 235U is "burned"). When they are exhausted the energy needed for the exploitation of leaner ores will require more input energy from fossil fuels than the nuclear power-plant will provide, so that a nuclear power-plant would become a complicated, expensive and inefficient gas burner.
The second, even more optimistic, assumption made at the birth of nuclear energy was that fast-neutron breeder reactors would very soon be developed that could convert the 99.3% 238U in natural uranium to 239Pu (an isotope of which does not exist in nature, and which is the explosive used in one type of nuclear bomb), which would then be used as fuel in nuclear reactors. Immense amounts of money and energy have been invested to no avail in attempts to develop fast-neutron breeder reactors in the last half century. We make no prediction about the eventual possiblity of breeding. At present it seems to be a technological failure. If that situtation continues we can look back on a wasted half a century in which mankind, for much lower cost, could have instead developed truly sustainable energy sources.
In 2003 we added a Rebuttal (Click here to download ) to the documents on the site. This document refutes criticism that was placed on the web by the nuclear industry (The World Nuclear Association, WNA, www.world-nuclear.org), in an attempt to discredit the conclusions reached in an earlier version of this website. Every point of criticism is completely refuted with facts and calculations, all based on publications of the industry itself. It is unpleasant to have to note that some of the criticism was based on apparently deliberate misquotation of our text.
Added 31 October 2003. From the beginning we have added the energy costs of safely sequestering the depleted uranium which arises as a waste product of enrichment. Recent scientific reports on the health costs to both the military and the civilian populations, particularly due to the carcinogenic property of uranium, have reinforced our conviction that this large energy expenditure must be acknowledged by the industry as an additional requisite to operating nuclear power plants.
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In this version we have introduced a new option. In the calculation of the energy costs and CO2 emission one can choose between leaving out the dismantling costs of the reactor at the end of its life, by simply abandonning it, or including the full costs of a careful dismantling process where environmental prerogatives play the most important role. We introduce this option because the costs of dismantling are very high, and there may be a tendency to cut costs by simply turning one's back on the environmentally responsible course.
revision 3 August 2005
About the authors. Contains short curricula vitae of the authors. click here to dowmload.
Introduction (410 kB). In the Introduction we describe the methodology followed in our analysis. The advantages of a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of nuclear power plants are compared with an analysis based on consideration of monetary cost/benefit studies. The fundamental physical criteria for sustainability are presented as grounded in the first and second law of thermodynamics. An overview of the energy costs is given. The technical parameters used in the analysis of a nuclear power plant are also given, for the operating mode of a nuclear reactor (system) under the currently applied high efficiency mode. Click here to download.
Chapter 1 (151 kB). We devote Chapter 1 to one of the most controversial issues in the current environmental debate: the emission of CO2. We calculate the ratio of the CO2 emission brought about by the use of nuclear energy and that of a gas-burning plant of the same net (electrical) capacity. For rich ores this is quite a bit less than unity (depending on whether one takes the "debts" into consideration, giving the impression that the application of nuclear energy would solve the global warming problem. However as rich ores become exhausted this ratio increases until it finally becomes larger than one, making the use of nuclear energy unfavourable compared to simply burning the (remaining) fossil fuels directly. In the long term the use of nuclear energy provides us with no solution to the problem. Click here to download.
Chapter 2 Fuel Costs and Uranium Reserves (348 kB). In the second chapter the cost of fuel (uranium) is given on the basis of figures from the nuclear mining industry. All industry estimates of the energy costs of energy are based on rich uranium ores. It is quite true that the energy costs of the mining and milling of these ores is negligible compared to the other energy costs of operating a nuclear power plant, as well as with respect to the energy produced by the power plant. The total energy available from these ores, as listed by the World Nuclear Association, is so small that in order to give a fair picture for the future, one must consider the energy costs of leaner ores. It turns out that the cost of mining and milling these lean ores soon surpasses the energy produced by "burning" them in a nuclear reactor. This chapter has been revised (31 Ocrtober 2003) to include the energy costs of centrifuge enrichment, and the total energy costs of enrichment have been recalculated assuming a 30-70 mix of gas-diffusion/centrifuge enrichment on a world-wide basis, Click here to download.
Chapter 3 The Power Plant (128 kB). In the third chapter the energy costs of building, operating, and decommissioning a nuclear power plant are calculated, assuming 2000 as the year of commissioning. The costs of decommissioning are lumped together with the construction costs, since even though these costs may actually be incurred fifty or a hundred years after the reactor has stopped producing energy, they should properly be subtracted from the energy produced during the useful lifetime of the plant. For this reason we label them "energy debts". Fortunately the time at which these "debts" must be paid is irrelevant, quite differently than monetary debts. The latter are, in economic calculations, discounted at an assumed interest rate, and are further subject to the variations in the value of money. It is here that one sees the great value of energy analysis as compared to monetary analysis. Energy is a conserved quantity, whereas the value of money is unpredictable beyond a very short time horizon. Energy debts cannot just be written off as uncollectable. As explained on the home page of this site, all energy calculations are carried out for the case in which the debts are paid (or will be paid), and the case where the no longer productive nuclear reactor is simply closed up and abandoned. Click here to download
.Chapter 4 Radioactive Waste; conditioning and disposal (69 kB). In the fourth chapter the energy costs of the safe sequestration of the immense amounts of radioactive substances produced by nuclear power are calculated. These calculations must, of necessity, be approximate since the gargantuan task of safe disposal has hardly been begun. Click here to download.
Chapter 5 Technical/Mathematical Summary of Formulas (44 kB). In the fifth chapter an overview of the formulas used in our study is given for reference. Click here to download.
References (41 kB)This file contains all of the literature refernces used in our study. Click here to download.