Where does the demand for uranium come from?

Question

If you were the manager of a power generating company using uranium, how much would you purchase?

Answer 1

true, but that 1/800 th of waste has a halflife of longer than your life span = you will never see the day that you can safely occupy the same space where you put it, whereas... if you use coal (USA has the largest deposits of coal than anywhere else on the planet ) and pump the exhaust into where we pulled our crude oil out... now that is a feasible, comparatively low cost and much safer solution. this also serves to reduce the demand for the mining and refining of Uranium... and since we have more than enough weapons grade plutonium (from Uranium) to destroy the PLANET, that reduces our demand for Uranium to only really needing it for mostly medical and industrial purposes like x-ray devices... BTW, the USA doesnt buy coal from foreign sources unless we run out, which we likely wont any time soon. look at crude oil as the example. we need it for cars because we are not putting coal in a lexus.... so we stockpile our oil and invade other countries for theirs... when it runs out they come to us for coal to power their industries which we pay pennies on the dollar for their finished products and they ride a bike to work. brilliand, just brilliant.

Answer 2

The answer to this question has two parts.  First, how much fuel do you purchase and second, at what enrichment do you purchase it.  In a modern nuclear reactor only about a third of the uranium fuel is replaced each refueling.  Different kinds of reactors take different amounts of fuel.  However, a 1000 megawatt electric plant requires about 24 tons or 48,000 pounds of uranium dioxide fuel, so one third of that is about 8 tons.

However the power company must buy the raw uranium mined from the ground, then have someone mill it into yellow cake form, then have someone convert it into uranium hexafluoride form, then have someone enrich it to 3% to 5% U-235 by weight, then have someone fabricate that enriched uranium into the uranium dioxide pellets and make the fuel assemblies.  So to get that 8 tons of fresh fuel, the company actually buys about 70 or 80 tons of milled uranium.

The other poster's concerns about nuclear fuel are a bit mis-guided and his "solutions" are about as realistic as having solar power provide all our electrical needs.

Answer 3

Depends on the type of reactor, the projected lifespan of the station and the rated output of each unit.

To put it another way: a nuclear generating station has 1/800th the volume of waste material as a coal fired generating station.   So I would have to buy 1/800th the quantity of Uranium versus coal for the equivalent output.