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Revisiting Uranium... Again

By Eric McErlain
As many of our long-time readers know, we spend a lot of time debunking anti-nuke rhetoric here at NEI Nuclear Notes. The feeling seems to be if you repeat something often enough people will start to believe it -- and that's whether or not it has any basis in fact.

Case in point, yesterday's op-ed that appeared in the Guardian by former U.K. Environment Minister Michael Meacher claiming that global uranium production peaked in 1981 and...
As a result, about a quarter of nuclear power plants could be forced to shut down within a decade because of a lack of fuel.
Rather than launch into a detailed debunking, I'll just point you to a post put together by Ian Hore-Lacy at the World Nuclear Association. Once you pile through that, be sure to check out Clifton Farrell's take from our archives. And don't forget that joint IAEA/OECD study we posted about a couple of days back.

I'd like to think this is the last time I'm going to have to do this, but I don't think so.

UPDATE: More from Tom Benson.

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Comments

J Wheeler said…
Unfortunately you are right, Eric. You will have to repeat yourself time and time again. The palybook for the antinuclear crowd hasn't changed since Ralph Nader penned it almost two decades ago, adng they keep rehashing the same old arguements.

The Australian Green and Labor parties are doing the same thing in claiming that nuclear energy is "too unsafe, too expensive, and too dangerous." I took on their arguements point by point in episode 21 of "This Week in Nuclear".

It's available at my new URL http://thisweekinnuclear.com

Keep up the good work!

John
June 11, 2006 at 7:59 PM
Rowan said…
Could you please fix your link to the "World Nuclear Association" which seems to point to blogger and not an international agency link
July 31, 2006 at 12:49 PM
Rowan said…
Could you please fix your link to the "World Nuclear Association" which seems to point to blogger and not an international agency link
July 31, 2006 at 12:50 PM
Eric McErlain said…
The link was broken because they changed the title of the post. I've since updated the link.
July 31, 2006 at 12:54 PM
Anonymous said…
Wow, I was totally pro-nuclear until I read some of these links. If the Earth only has enough known reserves of Uranium to fuel 85 years worth electricity at 2004 levels, the cost/benefit of building complex power plants with expensive fuel processing options is not so rosy. Even if unknown reserves may be nine times greater than known, as mentioned, how many decades of additional energy will be achievable, if all power plants are converted to the nuclear option. I thought we had thousands of years of fuel, not decades, or perhaps a century or two. That's a drop in the bucket when considering our time already spent here on Earth.
June 30, 2008 at 2:37 AM
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