|
Post by Barry Brook on Jul 20, 2012 12:48:17 GMT 9.5
A new post has been published on BraveNewClimate. Link here: bravenewclimate.com/is-the-olympic-dam-mine-a-special-caseThis is an Op Ed published by Geoff Russell and me in the The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper this week. It was in response to this piece by Jim Green. We compare his objections over uranium at OD with the reality of the alternatives of fossil fuels - like everything in life, context matters! This BNC Discussion Forum thread is for the comments related to this BNC post.
|
|
|
Post by Tom Keen on Jul 20, 2012 13:37:28 GMT 9.5
Great article Geoff and Barry. And timely, given the misguided hoo-ha which has surrounded OD for much of the last couple of weeks.
Cheers.
|
|
|
Post by Asteroid Miner on Jul 20, 2012 13:53:03 GMT 9.5
Most people have never heard of natural background radiation. Nor do they know that coal contains uranium. They think that all radiation comes from bombs and reactors. Educating them can be quite difficult because this information is such a shock.
Give each "student" a Geiger counter and let them freak out for a while. Tell them later that we date Egyptian mummies with the radioactive carbon they ate thousands of years ago.
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jul 20, 2012 14:42:20 GMT 9.5
What Tom Keen wrote.
|
|
|
Post by BrianH on Jul 20, 2012 18:34:01 GMT 9.5
Most people have never heard of natural background radiation. Nor do they know that coal contains uranium. They think that all radiation comes from bombs and reactors. Educating them can be quite difficult because this information is such a shock. Give each "student" a Geiger counter and let them freak out for a while. Tell them later that we date Egyptian mummies with the radioactive carbon they ate thousands of years ago. Heh. Even better: inform the public that the Hormesis Hypothesis has been confirmed, and that the public suffers from inadequate irradiation. As a consequence, the cities, towns, and ranches will be 'dusted' by air with OD tailings at least twice a year for the foreseeable future. What's hilarious is that it really would work! ;D :o ;D ;D
|
|
|
Post by singletonengineer on Jul 20, 2012 20:49:13 GMT 9.5
Brian H: Your attempt at humour is understandable, however it is also misguided.
It is neither funny nor productive to make fun of others' fears, regardless of how ill-founded you may believe them to be.
I may agree that the LNT hypothesis is severely tested and that there is at least some credibility in the hormesis proposition, however as far as I know, neither of these has broad public acceptance.
Take a leaf out of Barry's book. He is always and unfailingly courteous to those with opposing views. Communication without respect is impossible. Changing long-held viewpoints is difficult enough in a favourable environment; it becomes impossible in an adversarial environment.
|
|
|
Post by lftrsuk on Jul 21, 2012 5:53:14 GMT 9.5
I am convinced that we are already getting niggling indications of the near-future probability of international strife over hydrocarbon resources. Simple arithmetic proves that the only technology capable of supplying the total energy needs of every individual on the planet, for all of time, is that of breeder reactors.
When the presence of the specter of hydrocarbon rationing is felt, it will take international diplomacy of Wisdom-of-Solomon proportions to avoid instability or worse. The worldwide deployment of breeder reactors has to be at the point of 'going critical', when this juncture is reached, or we should try not to think too deeply about the world our children or grandchildren might inherit.
This beggars the question - is there any point at all in putting any of our hard-earned taxes into renewables, when their useless hulks will be overtaken by the deployment of emission-free breeder reactors, which only use a minuscule proportion of the resources and energy per MWh generated.
The only question our children or grandchildren will need to resolve is: Will it be LMFBRs or MSBRs?
Google: "atomic awakenings"
|
|
|
Post by unclepete on Jul 21, 2012 6:41:59 GMT 9.5
Great piece as usual Professor Brook. For me the stark choice facing humanity is : Either we are going to cook the biosphere, or we switch our electricity generation to nuclear. Personally I find the the comments on AGW from the scientific community rather sanguine. As a climate scientist and father of young children yourself, do you share my view , or I am being unnecessarily alarmist?
|
|
|
Post by Lantzelot on Jul 21, 2012 10:20:23 GMT 9.5
Question to the authors of the article: As you write the tailings are more mobile, releasing more radioactivity to the surroundings than when the material was locked into the ground. Is there any difference in this when extracting uranium compared with extracting some other element from the ground?
From my viewpoint it should be the same effect because you grind the bulk material into smaller pieces no matter which element that you want to extract (add to that the fact that you are reducing the amount of radioactivity when you extract uranium). But I could be missing something important. Do you have any comments on that?
|
|
|
Post by jagdish on Jul 21, 2012 17:39:34 GMT 9.5
As the biggest uranium and copper mine in the world after its full development, it IS a special case. It is entitled to have a few privileges to ensure its feasibility and to avoid being a sink for money and effort. Countervailing responsibilities include an equitable distribution of benefits to workers and customers round the world. Continued bias in usage of uranium is one of the violations of responsibility. Australia must use nuclear power to reduce emissions of harmful products and energy-poor India, a nation with large population and energy hunger should be given an appropriate share to help it avoid the same. Decisions on export should be made considering the interest of the company and Australia and not the vague ideas of international politics.
|
|
|
Post by proteos on Jul 21, 2012 22:12:50 GMT 9.5
I'm not very convinced that tailings are less radioactive than the original ore extracted from the earth. Uranium is only mildly radioactive due to a very long half life. Its decay chain is much more active, and those elements are left in the tailings. However, even accounting for more radioactive tailings that the original soil, I wonder what is the radioactive dose one would exposed to if he set up a tent for a year on top of a tailing's mound. It's probably reasonnable.
In fact, I would be much more concerned by the chemical toxicity of the various tailings.
|
|
|
Post by jagdish on Jul 22, 2012 23:16:42 GMT 9.5
periodic checks by the operators and mine safety regulators should cover the valid points of chemical toxicity and radioactivity. Initial environment clearance only declares the possibility of safe working. Periodic checks are required.
|
|
|
Post by David Walters on Jul 31, 2012 2:12:55 GMT 9.5
One the points about OD brought up recently on the Green Left Blog at: groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/messages is water usage and the sheer magnitude of the amount of water used for the mine. "Elena" argues that the drawing of water from the artisianal springs is threatening Aust. agriculture and that an expansion of the dam would be catastrophic. Comments on the water usage question? David
|
|
|
Post by QuarkingMad on Jul 31, 2012 11:01:09 GMT 9.5
In 2009-2010 in South Australia the Mining industry consumed 21,949 ML of water compared to Agriculture that consumed 720,351 ML (see link, p. 27 (33 in pdf)). Per day that is 60.1ML/d for Mining and 1,973ML/d for Agriculture and Green Left groups are worried about Mining removing the water for agriculture? Olympic Dam is included in this total (37ML/d). They have the ability to extract up to 42ML/d out of the GAB, 5ML/d more or 1,825ML/yr. Households consumed 79,741ML, and Manufacturing consumed 76,424ML. For these four groups the following is the total proportion of consumption as a percentage: Agriculture 65.7% Household 7.27% Manufacturing 6.97% Mining 2.00% For what Olympic Dam will extract extra out of the GAB in one year Agriculture will do that in one day! Granted, not from the same exact source in a proportional context. In this perspective what was the issue? Extensive hydrology surveys of the area have been done and are available to see in the Draft and Supplementary EIS's. Not even factoring in the program that BHP Billiton is conducting to cap abandoned and leaking pastoral bores in the GAB (the source for this is online somewhere, but took some serious Googling to find). Even the SA Water Minister has power to limit, or restrict water extraction if it is found to be detrimental in the GAB found in the Indenture Act (p. 34). I have a feeling it's more to do with the Uranium in the ground and anti-nuclear agendas than the water. One is the end and the other is a means to the end. Like all anti-nuclear agendas, when actual facts devoid of manipulation and a bit of context is provided they evaporate. As Marshall from HIMYM would state "Boom, Lawyered!"*. *Just to clarify, that wasn't directed at you David.
|
|
|
Post by Luke Weston on Jul 31, 2012 17:48:31 GMT 9.5
Olympic Dam is a large copper mine which produces a large amount of copper, and produces a relatively small amount of uranium and gold as essentially "free" byproducts. Is it possible to mine that copper without using a certain amount of water per tonne of copper produced? If we're going to generate, transmit, distribute and use electrical energy - generated by any generation technologies you like - somebody, somewhere, needs to be running a copper mine, and that copper mine needs to be using a bit of water. However, in the case of Olympic Dam, we have that little bit of uranium recovered as a byproduct. And that little bit of byproduct uranium represents an enormous energy resource, and staggering, almost inconceivable energy resource if the uranium from the expanded Olympic Dam project was used efficiently and converted completely to energy in an efficient 238U-based fuel cycle and reactor technology such as IFR. If every drop of water used at Olympic Dam was produced from seawater by desalination, and we also added a little more energy to pump the water from the coast to the mine, how much energy would that require? That energy requirement is a minuscule fraction of the total energy output (in the form of the uranium resource) produced each year by the mine. After the planned expansion, OD will produce 19,000 tonnes of uranium oxide per annum. That's 16,100 tonnes of uranium. A highly efficient nuclear fuel cycle such as the 238U IFR fuel cycle produces about 9.47 * 10 16 J of thermal energy per tonne of fertile nuclear fuel. So, if all of OD's uranium product was consumed in that fashion, that's 1.52 * 10 21 J of thermal energy per year. (Before thermodynamic conversion in a heat engine, if that's what you intend to do with the energy.) The World Coal Association estimates 2010 global coal production at 7229 million tonnes. The energy density of average black coal is about 24 megajoules per kilogram, so world coal production, in energy terms, is about 1.73*10 20 J. World oil production in 2011 was 72,888.60 thousand barrels per day. (I must admit I didn't get the fossil fuel production figures from a peer-reviewed scientific journal, I just Googled them.) Convert that to joules and our world oil production is 1.63*10 20 J per year. Total world natural gas production is about 3177*10 9 m 3, and the heating value is about 40 MJ/m 3, so that's a world total natural gas energy production of about 1.27*10 20 J. So let's add together all the coal and oil and natural gas production on Earth. About 4.63*10 20 J. The total energy resource output we could be getting from Olympic Dam is 3.3 times that. Personally, once those figures are on the table, there is hardly anything left to discuss. There is nothing to debate. If Scott Ludlam or anybody else thinks I'm kidding, they can check the arithmetic for me, it's all presented transparently above. Is the water use intensity of Olympic Dam higher than 3.3 times the total footprint, in terms of water consumption, of all the mining and extraction of fossil fuels on Earth? I suspect it's probably a little bit less than that. One the points about OD brought up recently on the Green Left Blog at: groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/messages is water usage and the sheer magnitude of the amount of water used for the mine. "Elena" argues that the drawing of water from the artisianal springs is threatening Aust. agriculture and that an expansion of the dam would be catastrophic. Comments on the water usage question? David
|
|
|
Post by jagdish on Aug 1, 2012 15:06:53 GMT 9.5
Olympic dam is mainly a copper mine. The water and power requirements are mainly a function of copper extraction. From a concentrate of uranium ore, it may be possible to extract uranium without water. Chlorine could be used to convert uranium to volatile UCl6. Even UCl4 can be evaporated at 791degrees Celsius. Reactors for the uranium to heat can be obtained easily from customers China or S.Korea or even potential customer India.
|
|
|
Post by rxc on Aug 2, 2012 1:50:42 GMT 9.5
It is not about safety or environmental issues. It is about jobs. I had an epiphany(sp?) one morning waiting for my train to work. A coal train came around the corner first, and we had to wait fo it to clear the line. 150 coal cars, carrying about 100 tons of coal, each, pulled by two very large GE locomotives. The entire amount energy carried by two of those trains could be carried in the back of my pickup truck, in the form of one nuclear fuel element. And you don't need any shielding to carry fresh fuel elements.
So, think about the jobs involved. All those miners, the people who build the coal cars, GE who makes the locomotives, the railroads, all the steel workers, etc, vs one truck driver. Nuclear is opposed mostly because it threatens jobs.
The rest of the arguments are just part of the smokescreen to confuse the issue. Coal contains uranium. There is more energy in the uranium that is burnt up with the coal, than in the carbon that is burned. We just don't want to recover it from the flyash, because it is cheaper to dig the uranium out of the ground.
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 2, 2012 12:21:51 GMT 9.5
It isn't so much jobs (though Australia's coal mining union is anti-nuclear) but the profits of fossil fuel companies.
|
|