BiscottiGelato

Most if not all Ontario and Quebec have been using nuclear energy for long time, also Canada is on ...
zoids 發表於 2011-1-4 01:59

My question would be, how much does it take to recycle Uranium? If the cost to recycle is higher than extraction from ground, then the ability to recycle won't affect spot price until reserve depletes and only hard to extract locations are left, raising the extraction cost.

It's good news that we have plenty of power to tap into for thousands of years to come. Tho, I'd believe the price for Nuclear power will soon be capped by the cost of safe disposal of the nuclear waste instead of the cost of Uranium extraction and Nuclear plant construction. The power won't come for free infinitely as we like to think. Of course... until Nuclear Fusion comes along... maybe several generations down the road if WWIII haven't broken out before then...

BiscottiGelato

Answering my own question: Process seem to be extremely costly, both in environmental cost and the actual processing cost itself. This won't come into play until we have depleted the sun all together or something... or we find some breakthrough to do it at a much lower all around cost. http://www.fpif.org/articles/nuclear_recycling_fails_the_test

Lik

Most if not all Ontario and Quebec have been using nuclear energy for long time, also Canada is one of the top uranium producer if I remember it right.
zoids 發表於 2011-1-4 01:59

I dunno about Quebec, but Ontario is definitely not entirely reliant on nuclear power. It is the largest form of power generation in the province (using Canada's very own CANDU reactors, no less), but it still amounts to less than 50% of Ontario's electricity generation. The province uses a large number of fossil fuel (eg. coal), natural gas, and hydroelectric power stations, as well as some alternative energy power stations as well.

-Lik

blue20ae

From Wikipedia....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Canada

In 2007, the leading type of power generation by utilities in Canada is hydroelectricity, with a share of 58.7%. Coal (16.6%), nuclear (15.5%), natural gas (6.6%) , fuel oil (1.2%), wind (0.5%) and wood (0.3%) follow.