If Colorado yellowcake uranium mill gets state's OK, customers would likely be in Asia

[harvey007]

Source: Denver Post

If government environmental overseers grant a license to build the nation's first uranium mill since the Cold War in western Colorado, project leaders then would turn their attention to China, Korea and other Asian powers.
That's where Energy Fuels Inc. would seek financing for its proposed $140 million uranium-processing facility, officials said last week. And yellowcake uranium made in Colorado likely would be sent to fuel Asian power plants.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16943858

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Of course. China and India are investing heavily in nuclear energy.

They are also not neglecting renewable energy, either. China has a huge dam system for hydropower, and China and India alike are pioneering wind farm technology.

The USA? Natural gas.

--d!

[lepus]

2. Sounds good in theory but,,,

Australia is one of the worlds primary sources of yellowcake. Currently there is a glut on the market from the fall of the soviet union, another major producer of uranium ore.

Personally, I am for nuclear power. From an ecological standpoint, it is far safer than coal or natural gas.

Most of the current problems with it revolve around disposal of the waste. Reasonable safe solutions were provided in the past but were shot down resulting in decades worth of waste piling up.

Just IMHO, the light water reactors design and philosophy is outdated along with most of our paradigms about nuclear power.

Thorium is likely the base of the next generation of reactors. It is far more abundant than U-235. There is no need for enrichment. It can not be readily weaponized. As a possible bonus, existing stocks of high level nuclear waste can be used in the reactors as a complementary fuel and disposed of.

[bananas]

5. From an ecological standpoint, nuclear is far worse than coal or natural gas.

It's been given a pass lately because it has low co2 emissions,
but a large scale up of nuclear energy would be an ecological disaster.
Thorium reactors won't be ready for decades, if ever.

[lepus]

6. The use of coal for power has already resulted in ecological catastrophes in europe and other places

CO2 is not the only pollutant from coal. Acid rain is one of the other major problems with using it as fuel. Lets not forget mercury,arsenic,soot and a whole slew of other pollutants it produces.

Chernobyl was the worst nuclear accident in history. The reason it was so bad was because the reactor design was not intrinsically safe. Light water reactors have inherent fail safes built in that prevent a Chernobyl type incident. Three Mile Island had a meltdown just like Chernobyl, but due to reactor design, as soon as the primary coolant flashed, the reaction stopped.

How much ecological damage has been caused by nuclear power? Far far less than coal. Even in the Ukraine, the damage is disappearing.

BTW, the first and only thorium reactor was built about 50 years ago. The reason more were not built was not because of problems with the design, but because they did not produce usable plutonium as a waste product for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

[bananas]

7. No they don't "have inherent fail safes built in that prevent a Chernobyl type incident"

There's been a lot of misleading hype and PR about nuclear industry.
It isn't magic, it's just a very dangerous, difficult, and expensive technology.

We can expect another TMI-scale event, with a 1 in 10 chance of it being a Chernobyl-scale disaster.
According to MIT's "The Future of Nuclear Power":

Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) identifies
possible failures that can occur in the reactor,
e.g., pipe breaks or loss-of-reactor coolant flow,
then traces the sequences of events that follow,
and finally determines the likelihood of their
leading to core damage. PRA includes both
internal events and external events, i.e., natural
disasters. Expert opinion using PRA considers
the best estimate of core damage frequency to
be about 1 in 10,000 reactor-years for nuclear
plants in the United States.
...
Potentially large release of radioactivity from fuel accompanies
core damage. Public health and safety depends
on the ability of the reactor containment to prevent
leakage of radioactivity to the environment. If containment
fails, there would be a large, early release (LER) and
exposure of people for some distance beyond the plant
site boundary,with the amount of exposure depending
on accident severity and weather conditions. The probability
of containment failure, given core damage, is about 0.1.

If those estimates apply to the roughly 440 reactors world-wide,
then we can expect a TMI-scale event roughly every 23 years:
10,000 reactor-years / 440 reactors = 23 years
Chernobyl was 24 years ago ... tick tick tick ...
If they try to keep all those reactors running for another 20 years,
then we can pretty much expect another TMI-scale accident,
with a 1 in 10 chance of it being more a Chernobyl-scale event.
And that's with "normally" operating nuclear power plants.

This is one of the reasons nuclear power was abandoned 30 years ago,
to scale it up to 1,000 reactors in the US and 10,000 globally,
there would have been a TMI-scale accident every year,
and a Chernobyl-scale disaster every decade.

The new Generation 3 designs are supposed to meltdown less frequently,
but serious design flaws have already been discovered.
And the new designs are so expensive, France is thinking of going back to the old designs.
Is China using the same quality control standards that resulted in melamine poisoning of pet food and baby food?

[bananas]

9. The use of nuclear power has already resulted in ecological catastrophes in the US and other places

As the article in the OP says: "In Colorado, a Cotter Corp. uranium mill near Cañon City that poisoned groundwater still has not been cleaned up, despite 25 years on the nation's Superfund list of environmental disasters."

Coal has caused more damage because it's used so much more.
We've already mined most of the high-grade uranium ore and are increasingly using very low grade ores,
where the uranium is just trace amounts of the rock. Trying to scale that up would result in wide-scale ecological disasters.

[bananas]

10. 500+ Organizations Sign Statement Rejecting Nuclear Power as a Solution to Climate Crisis

http://www.nirs.org/press/12-17-2007/2

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 17, 2007

CONTACT
Michael Mariotte, NIRS 301-270-6477 12
500+ Organizations Sign Statement Rejecting Nuclear Power as a Solution to Climate Crisis

More than 500 organizations from every corner of the U.S. and across the world have signed a statement explicitly rejecting the use of nuclear power as a means of addressing the climate crisis.

The signers include many of the world's largest and most influential environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth International, Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, Rainforest Action Network and many others, along with major peace groups like Code Pink, Peace Action, and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and hundreds of grassroots environmental, sustainable energy, religious, peace and other groups and businesses large and small from 46 states and 38 countries on six continents. 5900 individuals also have signed the statement, and more sign every day.

The statement is being released as the U.S. Congress prepares to consider billions of dollars of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for new nuclear reactor construction based in large part on the incorrect assumption that nuclear power is a useful means of reducing our carbon emissions.

"We keep hearing from nuclear industry lobbyists that environmentalists are 're-examining' nuclear power," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), which has been collecting the signatures. "That re-examination is long over, and it is clear that nuclear power is not helpful at addressing the climate crisis. Indeed, because of its high costs, long construction times, and its own considerable carbon footprint, its use would actually make matters much worse by diverting the resources necessary to take genuinely effective steps to end carbon emissions."

"Moreover," Mariotte added, "nuclear power has not successfully addressed any of the problems that caused the failure of its first generation: safety, radioactive waste disposal and the poor economics that led to soaring electric bills, bond defaults and utility bankruptcy. Add to that the newer problem of security, and nuclear power can't win any rational argument over renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies."

"Our energy future ultimately must and will be carbon-free and nuclear-free. Fortunately, such a future is attainable, and in time to avert the worst of climate change. But the sooner we get there, the better," said Mariotte. "It's time for the Bush Administration and U.S. Congress to let go of their 20th century thinking and start taking meaningful steps to reduce both carbon and radioactive emissions and build a truly sustainable energy future. As we saw in Bali, the world is crying out for action."

The statement, signed (as of December 17, 2007) by 515 organizations, states simply: "We do not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power."

The statement has been translated into French, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian.

A list of U.S. organizational signers can be seen at http://www.nirs.org/petition2/ussigners121707.pdf. A list of international organizational signers is available at http://www.nirs.org/petition2/intsigners120607.pdf. Both lists are updated periodically.

The statement can be signed at: http://www.nirs.org/petition2/index.php

More information on why nuclear power is not a suitable choice for addressing the climate crisis can be found at www.nirs.org (Reports, Papers and Info You Can Use) and http://www.nirs.org/climate/climate.htm

[grahamhgreen]

3. A Freind of mine used to live in that area and fight against the mines, she just died

of pancreatic cancer.

She was 43, a librarian and artist.

[sarcasmo]

8. How sad. I wonder how many others in there 40's dies in that area.

[bananas]

4. "despite 25 years on the nation's Superfund list of environmental disasters"

"In Colorado, a Cotter Corp. uranium mill near Cañon City that poisoned groundwater still has not been cleaned up, despite 25 years on the nation's Superfund list of environmental disasters."

We shouldn't trust them to start new mines and mills until the old ones have been cleaned up.
You just can't trust the nuclear industry - at any stage of the fuel cycle.

[Ashgrey77]

11. Cotter Corp.

I live in Canon City in the superfund site. I drank contaminated well water for 10 years, no one told us it was a superfund site when we bought our house, and no one told us our well was contaminated with uranium and molybdenum among other things (Including the EPA, and the local Health Department). We didn't even know until Cotter wanted to bring in ton's of low level waste from Maywood, New Jersey to dispose of in their impoundment ponds (Which by the way are two of the biggest in the world, to the point they dont even make them that big anymore). They are leaking and have been since the 1980's, they have waste from the manhatten project and they don't know where it is buried. They used unlined ponds from the 1950's to the 1980's and still have not cleaned up the area that was used. The mill is built on the Wolf Creek mine which goes down 1000's of feet and crisscrosses across the entire area, not to mention one of the main vertical shafts is open, right in the middle of their property. The water in the mine is orange and smells like sulfer because of the sulfuric acid used in the milling process. And to top it all off the mill is built on the aquifer for the entire area. They have a dam on Sand Creek that holds the water from the ponds and supposedly pumps all the contaminated water back into the ponds, it's a earthen dam. I live roughly no more than 2 miles from this place, it has ruined our lives and countless others and nobody cares. This is in the middle of the United States, if this happens here just fucking imagine the shit that has been done EVERYWHERE. My entire family is now having health problems from being poisoned chemically, I myself am a male in my early 30's and have a host of health problems including hypothyroidism.

[bananas]

12. Thanks for speaking out about this.

A lot of people are unaware of these problems.