Could you tell me where the nuclear wessels are?

Months and months ago the House passed a historic climate change bill (derided by many people in the know as weak sauce) called Waxman-Markey. Not too long ago, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer came out with their own Senate counterpart to that bill. But not everyone's on board with the sort of cap-and-trade scheme that shows up in these bills. So this week two Senators from different parties combined forces to unveil an alternative. The most interesting bit is the special focus they have on one particular source of energy, mentioned right in the press release on sponsor Jim Webb's website: "Alexander, Webb Introduce Bipartisan Clean Energy Legislation with Emphasis on Nuclear Energy Investment". From the PR:

This initiative is also designed to keep the United States competitive in a global marketplace that has accelerated the development of nuclear power. While the U.S. has been at a stand-still in developing nuclear power in the last 30 years, others are forging ahead. France – with the lowest electric rates in Europe - now gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, while Japan’s nuclear fleet accounts for 35% of its electricity. And this week the United Kingdom announced plans to expand its reactor fleet.

I say that this emphasis on nuclear energy is interesting because the arXiv blog has a very interesting find today in a post called "The Coming Nuclear Crisis." This has nothing to do with any sort of safety issues or the disposal of waste or anything like that. The crisis is far more basic and far larger than those issues.

Nuclear power relies on fission. Certain large atoms (e.g. a particular isotope of uranium) are split into smaller atoms, releasing energy in the process. But if you don't have the right ingredients you can't do it. According to the arXiv blog:

The world is about to enter a period of unprecedented investment in nuclear power. The combined threats of climate change, energy security and fears over the high prices and dwindling reserves of oil are forcing governments towards the nuclear option. The perception is that nuclear power is a carbon-free technology, that it breaks our reliance on oil and that it gives governments control over their own energy supply.

That looks dangerously overoptimistic, says Michael Dittmar, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who publishes the final chapter of an impressive four-part analysis of the global nuclear industry on the arXiv today.

Perhaps the most worrying problem is the misconception that uranium is plentiful. The world's nuclear plants today eat through some 65,000 tons of uranium each year. Of this, the mining industry supplies about 40,000 tons. The rest comes from secondary sources such as civilian and military stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium. "But without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013, concludes Dittmar.

It's not clear how the shortfall can be made up since nobody seems to know where the mining industry can look for more.

That means countries that rely on uranium imports such as Japan and many western countries will face uranium shortages, possibly as soon as 2013. Far from being the secure source of energy that many governments are basing their future energy needs on, nuclear power looks decidedly rickety.

There's a nice little bit of sunny speculation at the end of the article about the possibility of military stockpiles being used for energy production, leading to a nuclear weapon-free world. Regardless of whether that comes to pass, this apparent impending fuel shortage might be something to keep an eye on.

Bonus link