Always a wealth of valuable information in your work. If there's any hope of a reasoned, dispassionate discussion on the future of energy, exposing the many absurdities of the go-green-today-or-die-tomorrow crowd is essential. You're doing a helluva job. Thx 🙏🏽
Mar 26, 2023·edited Mar 26, 2023Liked by B.F. Randall ⚛ ⛏ ⚡
Super piece. It's even worse than space gives you to detail it. We know this b/c we know your background. And ours own experience.
Case in point. Iron Mtn Superfund NPL site near Redding, CA. The Responsible Parties under Superfund have paid ~$100 million into a form of risk transfer/risk finance. The interest off that fund is supposed to operate a wastewater treatment plant in perpetuity to deal with the acid mine drainage.
Like the Animas site you mentioned, there are many of these. While we piss away $369 BILLION in the Inflation Reduction Act on "Rube Goldberg machines" (we love that term you coined), sites like these (deemed "imminent and substantial endangerments to human health and the environment" or they wouldn't be on the NPL list) aren't resolved. And, we want to create more? Why? EV's. To pretend we're saving the planet.
Want to see what it looks like to have to pay US Fish & Wildlife agents to scare waterfowl off a mine tailings pond so acidic it cooks birds from the inside out? We included video from the infamous Berkeley Pit at the Silver Bow Creek/Butte Superfund site, near Butte, Montana (an ARCO legacy mining site) in "Sustainabilchemy - part 1" >https://envmental.substack.com/p/sustainabilchemy
This is something that is very much absent from mainstream discourse on 'the environment'. Of course we need to deviate in some way from the current model, but the massive green push we are being morally marketed aligns so seamlessly with corporate interests that we aren't noticing its drawbacks.
I don't know much about nuclear options; are there feasible smaller-scale facilities that could be placed in any country?
study up on the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor. There are many others. Oklo has micro-scale reactors. My Substack has several articles on point.
We're saving the earth to death. Literally. Oh, and wildlife habitat. And pushing species on the edge to Endangered/Threatened status. And putting food for animals and people in gas tanks. And calling that "progressive environmentalism". https://envmental.substack.com/p/crying-fowl
Interesting fact. France, which partially reprocesses its fuel, having used just 5oz of uranium per person per year to generate 88% of their domestic electricity supply. About $15 worth/yr. With these or even lower requirements for a closed fuel cycle, it would be unnecessary to mine uranium. You could just add an additional flotation and extraction circuit on any metal mine mill to extract the trace amounts of uranium & thorium in the ore. All the energy our civilization would need for a 100Myrs.
That would be great if you want to delve into that subject. I haven't seen it analyzed by anyone. Way too much work for me right now, but you'd have the knowledge to do the job.
I've often wondered what happens to these trace metals like uranium & thorium that end up being extracted in most metal mine-mills in the floatcon. I guess they are left behind when the targeted metals are chemically precipitated out of solution. When you get into a closed fuel cycle where as little as 800kg of thorium or uranium will run a 1GWe, 2GWth nuclear power plant for a year, it would take very little of those metals to provide even a 5-fold increase in World energy supply (as will be needed).
I've often heard just one rare earth mine produces enough waste thorium annually to power the entire World's primary energy supply for an entire year. They will pay you to take the thorium away. And a new rare earth mine in I think Greenland has lots of uranium by-product they intend to sell as I recall. And of course there is substantial uranium & thorium in coal ash, I believe typically ~12X the energy content of the original coal. And potash mines produce a lot of uranium in tails I seem to recall reading somewhere. And of course there is uranium in seawater that I've read would be profitable to extract @ ~$250/lb price.
The whole point is to all the Doomers & Malthusians who are always claiming Nuclear is "Unsustainable", that is all nonsense. In fact much more sustainable than wind or solar. Giving up the greenie notion that a resource has any value apart from the technology needed to utilize that resource. What's the total material consumed in quantity & $ per delivered TWh for wind & solar, including the necessary buffer, over a full lifecycle vs a nuclear power plant?
It is ultimately an academic question in that undoubtedly fusion will be practical within a hundred years from now. Then it is a matter of the much larger deuterium, lithium & boron resources. Starting with fission-fusion hybrids. Early fusion machines will produce copious amounts of neutrons which can cause criticality in a natural uranium or thorium molten salt by breeding U-233 from Th-232 and Pu-239 from U-238.
Accelerated by-production of mine tailings is not just "expected" to increase, it must increase. Demand for mineral products is skyrocketing and primarily driven by the third world seeking to improve their standards of living.
Always a wealth of valuable information in your work. If there's any hope of a reasoned, dispassionate discussion on the future of energy, exposing the many absurdities of the go-green-today-or-die-tomorrow crowd is essential. You're doing a helluva job. Thx 🙏🏽
Super piece. It's even worse than space gives you to detail it. We know this b/c we know your background. And ours own experience.
Case in point. Iron Mtn Superfund NPL site near Redding, CA. The Responsible Parties under Superfund have paid ~$100 million into a form of risk transfer/risk finance. The interest off that fund is supposed to operate a wastewater treatment plant in perpetuity to deal with the acid mine drainage.
Like the Animas site you mentioned, there are many of these. While we piss away $369 BILLION in the Inflation Reduction Act on "Rube Goldberg machines" (we love that term you coined), sites like these (deemed "imminent and substantial endangerments to human health and the environment" or they wouldn't be on the NPL list) aren't resolved. And, we want to create more? Why? EV's. To pretend we're saving the planet.
Want to see what it looks like to have to pay US Fish & Wildlife agents to scare waterfowl off a mine tailings pond so acidic it cooks birds from the inside out? We included video from the infamous Berkeley Pit at the Silver Bow Creek/Butte Superfund site, near Butte, Montana (an ARCO legacy mining site) in "Sustainabilchemy - part 1" >https://envmental.substack.com/p/sustainabilchemy
Hats off to you and JLPIII. Great piece.
This is something that is very much absent from mainstream discourse on 'the environment'. Of course we need to deviate in some way from the current model, but the massive green push we are being morally marketed aligns so seamlessly with corporate interests that we aren't noticing its drawbacks.
I don't know much about nuclear options; are there feasible smaller-scale facilities that could be placed in any country?
study up on the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor. There are many others. Oklo has micro-scale reactors. My Substack has several articles on point.
We must destroy the earth to save the planet.
We're saving the earth to death. Literally. Oh, and wildlife habitat. And pushing species on the edge to Endangered/Threatened status. And putting food for animals and people in gas tanks. And calling that "progressive environmentalism". https://envmental.substack.com/p/crying-fowl
Interesting fact. France, which partially reprocesses its fuel, having used just 5oz of uranium per person per year to generate 88% of their domestic electricity supply. About $15 worth/yr. With these or even lower requirements for a closed fuel cycle, it would be unnecessary to mine uranium. You could just add an additional flotation and extraction circuit on any metal mine mill to extract the trace amounts of uranium & thorium in the ore. All the energy our civilization would need for a 100Myrs.
wow--I'd love to publish a piece on this. Are you up for co-authoring an article?
That would be great if you want to delve into that subject. I haven't seen it analyzed by anyone. Way too much work for me right now, but you'd have the knowledge to do the job.
I've often wondered what happens to these trace metals like uranium & thorium that end up being extracted in most metal mine-mills in the floatcon. I guess they are left behind when the targeted metals are chemically precipitated out of solution. When you get into a closed fuel cycle where as little as 800kg of thorium or uranium will run a 1GWe, 2GWth nuclear power plant for a year, it would take very little of those metals to provide even a 5-fold increase in World energy supply (as will be needed).
I've often heard just one rare earth mine produces enough waste thorium annually to power the entire World's primary energy supply for an entire year. They will pay you to take the thorium away. And a new rare earth mine in I think Greenland has lots of uranium by-product they intend to sell as I recall. And of course there is substantial uranium & thorium in coal ash, I believe typically ~12X the energy content of the original coal. And potash mines produce a lot of uranium in tails I seem to recall reading somewhere. And of course there is uranium in seawater that I've read would be profitable to extract @ ~$250/lb price.
The whole point is to all the Doomers & Malthusians who are always claiming Nuclear is "Unsustainable", that is all nonsense. In fact much more sustainable than wind or solar. Giving up the greenie notion that a resource has any value apart from the technology needed to utilize that resource. What's the total material consumed in quantity & $ per delivered TWh for wind & solar, including the necessary buffer, over a full lifecycle vs a nuclear power plant?
It is ultimately an academic question in that undoubtedly fusion will be practical within a hundred years from now. Then it is a matter of the much larger deuterium, lithium & boron resources. Starting with fission-fusion hybrids. Early fusion machines will produce copious amounts of neutrons which can cause criticality in a natural uranium or thorium molten salt by breeding U-233 from Th-232 and Pu-239 from U-238.
Accelerated by-production of mine tailings is not just "expected" to increase, it must increase. Demand for mineral products is skyrocketing and primarily driven by the third world seeking to improve their standards of living.
Thank you for another great essay. I share your work with all my "green" "friends".
What a load of bullshit.
We can have both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time now. It's not an issue of convincing. Greed is bad. Conspicuous consumption is, too.
We can change. Earth will be fine. Humanity may be f#*ked.