Comment: U company question and their answer: "Is there a need for more uranium,Industry experts project that, given the number of new reactors planned and the world-wide growing demand for electricity, the demand for uranium will grow significantly over the next decade. Only freshly-mined uranium may satisfy the growing demand" True expert listed below is NO!!!!!!!!!!!
The Fukushima nuclear disaster last year in Japan changed the discussion of nuclear power. Suddenly, for many people, the dangers of a nuclear accident overshadowed the promise of nuclear power as a clean, readily available source of energy. Around the world, public opinion and many government officials turned against nuclear power No: It Is Costly and Dangerous
By Peter A. Bradford
If asked whether we should increase our reliance on caviar to fight world hunger, most people would laugh. Relying on an overly expensive commodity to perform an essential task spends too much money for too little benefit, while foreclosing more-promising approaches.
That is nuclear power's fundamental flaw in the search for plentiful energy without climate repercussions, though reactors are also more dangerous than caviar unless you're a sturgeon.
.How dangerous? The full impact on people's health from last year's disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan won't be known for years, if ever.
But other impediments to relying on a vast nuclear expansion to fight climate change are already clear: Thousands of Japanese may not return to their contaminated hometowns for many years, if ever. The world's largest private utility is a ward of the state.
The Japanese government at the time of the accident has fallen. Four reactors were destroyed live on world-wide television. All of this happened on the watch of a safety regulatory regime thought to have been a world leader.
A world more reliant on nuclear power would involve many plants in countries that have little experience with nuclear energy, no regulatory background in the field, and some questionable records on quality control, safety and corruption.
But safety isn't why the U.S. stopped ordering new reactors in the mid-1970s. Nuclear power is so much more expensive than alternative ways of providing energy that the world can only increase its nuclear reliance through massive government subsidy—like the $8 billion loan guarantee offered by the federal government to a two-reactor project in Georgia approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this year. That one loan guarantee amounts to $100 in risk exposure per U.S. family. And then there's the quasi-tax that Georgia's government has imposed on its utility customers in the form of early rate increases to help the utility avoid invoking the loan guarantee.
There are better choices. John Rowe, former chief executive of Exelon Corp., EXC +0.08%an energy company that relies heavily on nuclear power, recently said, "At today's [natural] gas prices, a new nuclear power plant is out of the money by a factor of two." He added, "It's not something where you can go sharpen the pencil and play. It's economically wrong." His successor, Christopher Crane, recently said gas prices would have to increase roughly fivefold for nuclear to be competitive in the U.S.
Exelon's current low-carbon plan makes clear that many combinations of energy efficiency, renewables and gas beat new nuclear units.
Countries that choose power supplies through democratic, transparent and market-based methods aren't building new reactors. Only two are under construction in Europe. The U.S. "nuclear renaissance" has collapsed from 31 announced reactors in 2009 to five now likely to be built, none in states that rely on competitive power markets.
In a world in which nuclear-power policy serves an energy policy that serves the public (not the other way around), countries will steer by "right principles, not the gift of prophecy," as George Kennan wrote half a century ago. That won't be good news for new reactors.
Mr. Bradford is an adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School and former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
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