Allison Connell
June 21, 2007
The New Brunswick government’s call for a feasibility study for a second reactor at Lepreau seems to overlook a fundamental fact: uranium ore in non-renewable and is already on the road to depletion.
If there is going to be an increased demand for uranium brought about by a “nuclear Renaissance” then the stock of available uranium fuel will diminish much more rapidly than if the present rate of use continued. This factor would be much more in evidence by the time another reactor was built and licensed than it is now.
Dr. Helen Caldicott points out in her new book Nuclear Power is not the Answer (2006) that uranium ore comes in various grades, such as the rich high grade on the one hand and low grade on the other.
Sometimes a mixture of the two is milled for fuel. The high grade ore is usually mined first, making us ever more dependent on the low grade which is more difficult (and therefore more expensive) to extract.
Because of the increasing difficulty of mining the low grade ore, future extraction processes would require a higher and higher proportion of input energy to do the job.
The net energy gain would be constantly reduced until energy input would equal energy output.
Some uranium mines have already been shut down and one in northern Saskatchewan appears to be permanently flooded. To say uranium reserves could last another 50 years is misleading. It does not take
into consideration the declining net energy gain.
ALLISON CONNELL
Woodstock
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