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Post by Barry Brook on May 6, 2012 20:47:11 GMT 9.5
Newly published on BraveNewClimate blog is an article I wrote for the South Australian Mines and Energy Journal on carbon emissions of uranium mines. (This, and others in the SACOME series, have also been published by my co-author, Ben Heard, on DecarboniseSA). This is a new version of a blog post I published on BNC a few years ago -- but streamlined, simplified and updated. I hope you find it useful. Read the blog post here: Carbon offsetting of uranium mines? |
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Post by sod on May 6, 2012 21:31:54 GMT 9.5
I think there is no rational discourse possible about this: nuclear is a low CO2 energy option. the question is about how low. This famous study claims, that even with high-grade ore, you still have a longer "payback" time than wind has. www.lonsee.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Dateien/Sonstiges/Info_Broschuere_der_Landesregierung_zur__Volksabstimmung_27.11.2011.pdf"For high-grade ores, such as most of those currently being mined in Australia, the energy inputs from uranium mining and milling are relatively small. However, there are significant emissions from the construction and decommissioning of the nuclear power station, with the result that the station must operate for 2-3 years to generate these energy inputs. (For comparison, wind power requires only 3-7 months.3)" (though the source is the Danish Wind Industry Association..) |
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Post by anonposter on May 6, 2012 22:01:17 GMT 9.5
I think there is no rational discourse possible about this: nuclear is a low CO2 energy option. the question is about how low. This famous study claims, that even with high-grade ore, you still have a longer "payback" time than wind has. www.lonsee.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Dateien/Sonstiges/Info_Broschuere_der_Landesregierung_zur__Volksabstimmung_27.11.2011.pdf"For high-grade ores, such as most of those currently being mined in Australia, the energy inputs from uranium mining and milling are relatively small. However, there are significant emissions from the construction and decommissioning of the nuclear power station, with the result that the station must operate for 2-3 years to generate these energy inputs. (For comparison, wind power requires only 3-7 months.3)" (though the source is the Danish Wind Industry Association..) With wind power you have to include the backup power source in the calculations when figuring how much they emit and given that at current technology we'll need a lot of simple cycle methane burners. One thing that they've neglected to mention that is that wind turbines require a lot more construction materials (e.g. steel, concrete) than nuclear power plants per unit of nameplate capacity, thus the emissions from construction and decommission of a wind farm will be higher than with a nuclear power plant (except for the fact that they don't decommission wind farms, they just leave them to pollute the landscape when the subsidies run out). Unless energy use in fabricating nuclear fuel were dominant there is just no way that wind (with optimistic capacity factor of ≈30%) can pay back its emissions faster than nuclear (where twice that capacity factor is pessimistic) can. Let's just say that energy density has its advantages. |
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Post by Scott on May 7, 2012 2:42:32 GMT 9.5
Doubling EROI is not a huge advantage.
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Post by jagdish on May 7, 2012 9:57:30 GMT 9.5
Carbon emissions can be further reduced by installing a cost-effective 500MW PHWR (using the uranium product as fuel) using electrical machinery to maximum extent in mine operations.
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Post by Greg Simpson on May 7, 2012 11:49:54 GMT 9.5
Perhaps it is getting to be time to require the sequestering of the carbon emitted by industrial activities. It could start out fairly low, perhaps 10% of the carbon, and increased if that proves affordable. Right now it is looking like absorbing carbon dioxide in crushed rock is the cheapest method, but we need some money invested to try it out. Or other methods that look good, of course.
I doubt uranium mines would have much trouble with this, but they shouldn't be singled out.
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Post by Roger Clifton on May 7, 2012 13:25:03 GMT 9.5
(Thanks for the direct link here from old BNC!)
Where better for a set of nukes than on the coast of South Australia? It would send power north to developments like the Olympic Dam Mine and south east to the industrial areas of South Australia.
Furthermore, nukes are unsurpassable for desalination because all of their heat is exported through steam condensers, which can be integrated with flash distillation. So they could also be piping potable water north to desert industries and south to a thirsty city, with brine going back into the ocean.
BHP could do a lot more to get the (Australian) federal ban on nuclear lifted, than whisper in the ear of the Minister, Martin Ferguson. Such lobbying is one job that the mining industry could do for the common good and earn brownie points from sensible environmentalists.
A politically easier option would be to put a large coal-fired power station in one of the coalfields nearer to the giant mine, perhaps near the N-S transcontinental railway. Such a power station would have even longer powerlines, but it would have more liberty to dump its waste ash in its own holes, and to deliver its waste gases (COx, SOx, NOx and particulates) by dilution into an underpopulated landscape. Desalination using the not-so-generous condensation heat would still be possible, but would require two extra pipelines (seawater in, brines out) to the coast as well as longer potable-water pipelines to its customers.
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Post by anonposter on May 7, 2012 13:28:34 GMT 9.5
I would rather we wait until we've got the easy part (i.e. electricity generation) dealt with before trying such things (besides, we could probably get significant reductions just by electrifying the industrial activities instead of bothering with sequestration, which is likely to be very energy intensive anyway).
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Post by Greg Simpson on May 7, 2012 13:53:20 GMT 9.5
I would rather we wait until we've got the easy part (i.e. electricity generation) dealt with before trying such things (besides, we could probably get significant reductions just by electrifying the industrial activities instead of bothering with sequestration, which is likely to be very energy intensive anyway). I've seen figures that suggest it won't cost too much, which implies that it can't use all that much energy. I suspect that actually doing something would get less opposition than a tax. MODERATOR
BNC is a science based site and as such we require you to provide refs/links to support statements like"I've seen the figures....".Otherwise it is an anecdote/personal opinion. Please read the BNC Comments Policy and supply these links in future. Thankyou. |
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Post by anonposter on May 7, 2012 13:58:36 GMT 9.5
The figures I've seen with regard to clean coal indicate that sequestration would kill the economics of it (and that it'd take a pretty substantial part of the energy generated, to the point at which a lot of clean coal proposals these days only plan to capture some of the CO2).
I mean we're talking about capturing CO2 and then storing large amounts of a gas somehow and keeping it stored basically forever (turning it into rock which is probably the best approach is especially energy intensive).
MODERATOR
See my comment to Greg above.
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Post by huon on May 7, 2012 14:22:16 GMT 9.5
If one were depressed about the prospects for the environment, one need only re-read the last three paragraphs of this post. I'll quote the second:
"If you crunch these numbers, you find that the 19,000 tUO2 per annum production from the Olympic Dam expansion would eventually yield 130 million GWh of zero-carbon electricity, and so avoid up to 120 billion tCo2-e, which is four times the total current global emissions from fossil fuels. All of this from one (albeit large) expansion of one uranium mine in one country."
A devastating case for optimism.
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Post by Barry Brook on May 7, 2012 15:39:17 GMT 9.5
Right huon - now we need to couple optimism with pragmatism, and we'll really start to lick the big problems.
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Post by Roger Clifton on May 7, 2012 19:24:49 GMT 9.5
At one of the big conferences, perhaps Copenhagen, a commitment was made by the developing nations to give away gigabucks to the developing nations to help them adapt to climate change. (I'm not being sarcastic, there actually were words to that effect.) At the same time, we see an increasing traffic in guilt money paid into "carbon offsets", a system where the payer is promised (poker-faced) that the money will be used to eliminate emissions that otherwise would have been emitted. Somewhere along the line, the fine print of the promise ensures the exclusion of nuclear. Needless to say, they are hard put to find any such process. There is no such thing as negative emissions to "offset" real emissions. Even so, a growing will to contribute money to carbon-reducing processes does hold promise that the tide will turn and sentiment seeks to fund a nuclear rescue of the greenhouse. It would seem that a virtuous target for Western guilt-money should be the development of a prototype fast reactor for eventual mass production for installation in developing countries. Could that be a topic for discussion at the Breakthrough Institute? |
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Post by Luke Weston on May 7, 2012 22:56:06 GMT 9.5
I think there is no rational discourse possible about this: nuclear is a low CO2 energy option. the question is about how low. This famous study claims, that even with high-grade ore, you still have a longer "payback" time than wind has. www.lonsee.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Dateien/Sonstiges/Info_Broschuere_der_Landesregierung_zur__Volksabstimmung_27.11.2011.pdf"For high-grade ores, such as most of those currently being mined in Australia, the energy inputs from uranium mining and milling are relatively small. However, there are significant emissions from the construction and decommissioning of the nuclear power station, with the result that the station must operate for 2-3 years to generate these energy inputs. (For comparison, wind power requires only 3-7 months.3)" (though the source is the Danish Wind Industry Association..) I did a little search to find the source of that. www.energyscience.org.au/FS02%20CO2%20Emissions.pdfIt's quoted verbatim from Diesendorf, who has taken it from the infamous junk science of Storm and Smith. |
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Post by huon on May 8, 2012 9:04:36 GMT 9.5
From the main post:
"Some environmentalists have objected stridently to this plan for an expanded mine, including Greens MLC Mark Parnell who said: 'Our state risks being left with a huge carbon black hole as we become the greenhouse dump for one of the world's richest companies'."
I gave Mr. Parnell's statement another look, and have concluded that he is fundamentally right. The Olympic Dam mine IS a huge carbon black hole, gobbling up great amounts of potential CO2 emissions. He just errs on the scale of things. This one hole in the Australian outback is not a "greenhouse dump" for just one company. Through displacement, it can eat the excess CO2 emissions of the entire planet. As an appetizer.
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Post by Cyril R on May 9, 2012 5:42:15 GMT 9.5
19,000 tonnes of uranium production... that's enough to power a around a quarter of all nuclear reactors in the world.
It's amazing to think that this comes from a single mine.
It's even more amazing when you realize the uranium is a BYPRODUCT. This Olympic Dam mine is actually a copper mine. A copper mine which happens to produce some gold and oh, also enough uranium to power a quarter of the world's nuclear reactors. It's almost incidental!
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Post by Roger Clifton on May 9, 2012 7:36:10 GMT 9.5
Planning for nuclear power supply would have to precede planning of the pit. If the mine workings were to be fully electrified, that is, with pantographs, conveyor belts and power cables down to the excavators, it would change the design of the pit. It would be an irony if a (underground) vertical shaft had to be dug for workers to commute to the floor of the (open) pit by elevator.
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Post by geoffrussell on May 14, 2012 23:24:47 GMT 9.5
What is it about many so-called environmentalists that makes them immune from simple arithmetic like this?
The coal industry must be overjoyed at its great fortune in having the Australian Conservation Foundation and other green groups on side and working hard to white ant the only real alternative to fossil fuel energy.
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Post by Barry Brook on May 15, 2012 11:09:29 GMT 9.5
Geoff, if we knew the answer to that question, we might be making faster headway. Perhaps it's the way it is being presented, as words rather than diagrams? People want to see visuals with their (small amount) of text, I suspect.
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Post by anonposter on May 15, 2012 14:50:34 GMT 9.5
What is it about many so-called environmentalists that makes them immune from simple arithmetic like this? Hard to say, though I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are just innumerate, innumeracy seems to be something of an epidemic among large segments of the population, even among people who are supposedly well educated. But ultimately I would suggest that much of the green movement is actually a quasi-religion. The coal industry must be overjoyed at its great fortune in having the Australian Conservation Foundation and other green groups on side and working hard to white ant the only real alternative to fossil fuel energy. I'd be surprised if the coal industry wasn't indirectly funding them. |
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Post by trag on Aug 15, 2012 2:14:55 GMT 9.5
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Post by QuarkingMad on Aug 15, 2012 10:11:55 GMT 9.5
This is good advice for, as you say, unhinging the anti-nuclear crowd. However most are apathetic to Nuclear power. They'll not support it when they think that's the prevailing view, and support it if they perceive that to be the prevailing view. From the discussions on Nuclear power that I have seen the majority of undecided trend to pro-nuclear when given unbiased facts from reputable sources. It all boils down to a persons priorities in life. Pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear groups are passionate about Nuclear power from different perspectives and in their list of passions it may be high up there, whereas with others it may be cooking, cars, or other things. Same to do with politics, most people make up their mind in the weeks leading into the election, or just go with what they perceive to be the flow in their community or family. Unless they have a passion in politics then they'll go with what they decide. Nevertheless, trag, what you post is spot on. I've seen it happen once to a person handing out anti-nuclear material who then went to question their stance after a discussion on Nuclear power. |
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Post by Roger Clifton on Aug 16, 2012 12:00:48 GMT 9.5
It may be hypocritical to speak of a sibling movement as "quasi-religious". After all, we share many of the values, especially concern for the greenhouse. Perhaps we only need to persuade them to change denomination. That may require us to use the language that followers understand.
My own speech is often colourful, appealing more to the heart than the accountant within.
Examples:
Buying offsets only serves to buy indulgence for our sins against the greenhouse.
Perhaps we should forbid climate denial?
We all must eventually stand judgement before the survivors of the disasters we have allowed to happen.
Even if we ourselves have perished in the vengeance of an angry climate.
Remember the climate as we knew it; its end is near.
No one should be able to buy a right to emit, it is sinful on any scale.
Surely anyone with a conscience must choose the lesser of two evils.
... and this one is for the moderator to blot out for excessive innuendo:
The emissions of the fathers are delivered upon the sons and all the generations that follow.
(but its tone does put scathing judgent on wilful carbon emitters !)
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Post by BNC Moderator on Aug 16, 2012 14:08:11 GMT 9.5
I think we can allow a little exasperated, exaggerated hyperbole as long as it is not directed at an individual.
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