Uranium InvestingUranium Investing for a Nuclear Powered World
Commodities / Uranium Aug 28, 2009 - 10:38 AM
By: Richard_Mills
Uranium Investing for a Nuclear Powered World
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information
The electricity needed to succeed in replacing fossil fuels, both for transportation and everyday use, will have to come from nuclear generation. There is simply no other logical alternative.
- Coal and natural gas plants emit carbon dioxide emissions.
- Extensive use of hydrogen is not practical due to its volatile nature and lack of infrastructure.
- Solar, wind and geothermal are all niche suppliers and are untried on a large scale. Solar and wind have extremely large footprints and geothermal seems to be limited to a few parts of the country. All three of these technologies are extremely important and each will successfully contribute, in a small way, to our independence from fossil fuels.
- High emissions, a negative energy return and severe environmental costs are associated with ethanol and make its use impractical.
- Hydro, going to clean eco-friendly energy isn’t accomplished by damming what free-flowing rivers are left.
And this fact, that there is no other logical alternative to going nuclear, is being recognized. Developing countries such as China and India, with 2.3 billion people between them, will, even while going mostly nuclear, drastically increase their consumption of fossil fuels. Is oil going to get any cheaper in the future? Not likely according to Dr. Fatih Birol chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris.
“In most fields, oil production has now peaked...Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabia’s to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabia’s if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030.” Dr Birol said.
The IEA has estimated that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7% a year compared to the 3.7 % decline it had estimated in 2007. The coming high price of energy derived from fossil fuels combined with ever increasing competition for limited resources will make the switch to nuclear production of our energy happen.
“Some 16 countries with existing nuclear power programs (Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, South Africa, Ukraine, USA) have plans to build new power reactors (beyond those now under construction). In all, over 100 power reactors with a total net capacity of almost 120,000 MWe are planned and over 250 more are proposed.”
https://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html
Global warming, reducing our carbon footprints, weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and achieving energy independence are all key issues facing us and future generations and no one is paying attention to HOW our future power is going to be produced, instead all seem to be concentrating on how this yet to be produced power will be stored.