Fuel availability in nuclear power

Energy consumption and economic development have been increasing side by side during the past century and the outlooks on the present do not indicate an end to this trend. Meanwhile the existing fleet of nuclear power installations is getting old and many plants will need to be shut down during the coming two decades. Beside that the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels and the big uncertainties around their accessibility and price makes fossil fuels look worse and worse as a source of energy.
The future of nuclear power and the role of fuel availability is a topic with many possible deciding factors. Demand of nuclear fuel is essential for the fuel availability´s possibility to matter. The new nuclear power plants and their type is therefore of great importance.
The risks with fuel availability are multiple. A shortage of fuel can emerge due to a rapid increase in demand that the supply side fails to follow. Another risk is a sudden fall in the supply chain due to unexpected events like problems with mines or changes in the secondary fuel supply sources military and civilian stockpiles.
Depletion of economic ores is something that is often mentioned as a limit to the era of nuclear power. This issue demands a lot of information to assess properly and this thesis can only point out obvious observations. Time spans for which the remaining uranium resources can sustain continued reactor operation is often put forward calculated from some resource base divided by the present annual reactor requirements. Such an argument is possible to interpret in more than one way. If a smaller resource base is chosen it is often easy to see that nuclear power is not sustainable. If a somewhat larger resource base is chosen the most evident conclusion is that nuclear power still has plenty of time and that economic and technical circumstances have a good opportunity to change before the uranium runs out.

Notice: This is a preliminary version that may be subject to change
Available from: Global Energy Systems