💧simon holmes à court Profile picture
Mar 6, 2021 15 tweets 7 min read Read on X
🤓@senbmckenzie facts are important…

while there's an immense amount of energy in all matter — E=mc² and all that — we *don't* have technology to get a lifetime's energy for a person out of a golfball sized lump of uranium.

since we can't rely on @MineralsCouncil, a thread:
if you did want to power an average australian's lifetime energy needs from uranium, what would it take? 🧐

…by a couple of different methods (link at end), i estimate that 2.1GWh would cover all the energy needs of an average australian lifetime, assuming full electrification.
working back from this handy chart from @WorldNuclear, in the best case you'd need 417cc of nuclear fuel (mainly UO₂) for a single australian's lifetime.

but how do you get that? read on…

world-nuclear.org/information-li… Image
first, if you are using traditional mining techniques, you'd need between 4.8 and 96 tonnes of uranium ore, depending on ore quality.

you then mill this to produce 46kg of yellowcake.

…you now have ~4.8 to ~96 tonnes of mill tailings to dispose of. ImageImage
at this point only 0.7% is the useful uranium-235 isotope, but you need it to be ~5%.

so you convert it to 58kg of uranium hexafluoride (UFl₆) — an extremely toxic compound — and run it through cascades of centrifuges to create a sample that has the right concentration. Image
thanks to the centrifuges, you've now got ~6kg of enriched UFl₆. awesome!

unfortunately, you've also got 52kg (10.2 litres) of UFl₆ "tails".

what to do with it?

put it in cylinders and store it, could come in handy some day! (not joking. just make sure it doesn't leak!) Image
now, you take the enriched UFl₆ and convert it into 4.6kg of UO₂ (plus a few other materials), put it into tubes (fuel rods) and configure into a fuel assembly. ImageImage
then you stick it in a reactor where it participates in a controlled chain reaction, producing heat that boils water, which ultimately drives a steam turbine and makes lots of lovely, very low CO₂ electricity. ImageImage
after ~5 years the fuel has done its useful work, and it's time to dispose of it.

…but it's still a bit too spicy, so it sits in a spent fuel pool for a few years. Image
then, generally when the pool is full, you take it out & put it into casks.

it's quite safe when encased in (lots of) concrete & steel — but if you plan to eat it, wait 130,000 years until it's as _radioactively_ benign as natural uranium.

(uranium is toxic. pls don't eat it.) ImageImage
so, @senbmckenzie,

for an aussie lifestime, you'll need 4.8–96t of uranium ore, leaving:
• almost as much mill tailings
• 10 litres of toxic UFl₆
• a bit more than a coke can lump of toxic & radioactive waste

a lot less than coal, but a *lot* more than "a golf ball amount".
don't get me wrong… it's freaking amazing that humans worked out how to do this… but let's not confuse the public with false claims.

[nb. i haven't tackled costs above. hoo boy, that's another massive subject!]

calcs here:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
erratum:

uranium hexafluoride is UF₆, not UFl₆.

(mr edwards, my chemistry teacher would be most disappointed!)
erratum #2:

wrong to say we don’t have the technology!

technically we do… we can put U into a breeder reactor (quite rare), reprocess (quite expensive) & repeat.

it’s not economic, and to my knowledge has never been done, but it’s _theoretically_ possible with existing tech.
so, in commercial/standard practice, you’d need the equivalent of ~100 golf balls of natural uranium to power an average aussie life.

...but if money was no object we know how to build a process that could approach the theoretical potential.

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More from @simonahac

Jul 20
hardly a week goes by without some 🪿telling me that "saudi arabia built a nuclear power station in just 8 years" or similar.

south korea built it for the UAE & it'll be 16+ years from formal announcement to project completion.

no, it was not on time & likely not on budget Image
any 🪿telling you nuclear can be built in australia in 2-3, 5, 10 or 15 years:
• ignores years of work required before construction starts
• doesn't understand IAEA's "construction" ignores _years_ of actual construction
• assumes an established regulator & warm supply chain.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 28
🤓 icymi, latest data from @EnergyInstitute is out!

this dataset has been lovingly curated since 1952, until recently by @bp_plc.

a good report, lots of charts and most exciting for energy nerds, lots of raw data!

i knocked up a few charts 🧵

energyinst.org/statistical-re…
🤓 global electricity generation by technology

gas and coal still growing, but at a slower pace than renewables.

quite likely we'll see coal and gas both peak in the next few years. Image
🤓 global nuclear and wind+solar, as energy

nuclear peaked in 2006. IEA expects that a new peak may be set in 2025. Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 18
☢️ with the #coalition expected to announce its #nuclear plan on wednesday, here are 18 questions every diligent journalist should be seeking answers to:

🧵
1. how will dutton remove the ban?

the coalition would require control of the senate to repeal the ban, which is embedded in two acts.

the coalition hasn’t controlled the senate since 2004-2007.
2. which state(s) would dutton build the reactors in?

only VIC, NSW and QLD grids are big enough to handle a large nuclear reactor.

WA, SA and TAS grids are too small to host a GW-scale reactor.
Read 20 tweets
May 20
🤓 you'll probably hear scary claims today about "blackouts" in NSW, due to a "reliability gap".

…caused by delays with SA-NSW transmission line, a few batteries & mothballed generators.

to meet the 99.998% reliability standard, NSW needs to build more kit.

not a big deal. 🧵 Image
the eraring power station has 4 units, each 720MW. delaying closure of 1-2 units could fill the gap.

a 500MW–1GW gas generator operating <10 hours a year would also suffice. lower emissions and might be cheaper?

helpfully AEMO has provided 9 options to fill the gap: Image
small reliability gaps are forecast in VIC and SA, but far enough out that they'll likely evaporate… as they often do for this regular report.

why? because the reports show what happens if we don't do anything more than committed — and we pretty much always do.
Read 6 tweets
May 15
i attended the ‘navigating nuclear’ conference on monday in sydney.

up front: there were some high quality presentations — on issues such as health impacts, safety culture, regulatory systems. Image
…but sadly there was also some abject nonsense…
the presentation below argued that we have two options:

1. build a complex grid of wind, solar, hydro, hydrogen, batteries, pumped hydro, transmission and EVs.

2. just build nuclear and use existing powerlines.

…apparently #2 is the way to go. 🙄 Image
Read 10 tweets
Mar 21
⚛️ @abcnews's recent #FactCheck made a classic rookie error in calculating that the latest US nukes had "build times of 10.1 and 10.4 years".

depending how you count it, it took somewhere between 13.9 years and ~19 years to build them.

easy mistake to make.

let me explain… 🧵
ABC's analysis assumes the build time is the elapsed period between "construction start" and "grid connection" dates.

in the real world, a nuclear power building project begins years before "construction start" and often finishes months after "grid connection".
"construction start" is defined by the IAEA as the "the date when first major placing of concrete for the base mat of the reactor building is made."

"grid connection" is when "the plant is first connected to the electrical grid for the supply of power."

pris.iaea.org/PRIS/Glossary.…
Read 18 tweets

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