Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Uranium 233 is a valuable resource, no matter what Robert Alvarez believes

Uranium 233 is a valuable resource, no matter what Robert Alvarez believes

by Rod Adams
Robert Alvarez has issued another misleading report about energy dense fuel materials titled: Managing the Uranium-233 Stockpile of the United States.
According to Alvarez’s report, the United States owns about 3400 pounds of U-233, which is one of two fissile isotopes of uranium. He portrays this resource, which has been in storage since the 1970s, as a hazardous stockpile that somehow puts the world at risk of a rogue group obtaining a nuclear weapons capability. Unfortunately, he is not the only person with this mistaken opinion. The Department of Energy is currently planning to spend nearly half a billion dollars to get rid of the United States’s carefully protected U-233 resources.
Alvarez’s report does not mention the fact that the stockpile contains as much potential energy as 23,000,000 barrels of oil. At current world oil prices, that gives it a comparable energy value of more than two billion dollars, even if it is not used for its highest and best purpose, as the seed for an expansive program of thermal spectrum breeder reactors.http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012/10/02/uranium-233-is-a-valuable-resource/

No comments:

Post a Comment