Nuclear Business Issues

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Fundamentals of Global Energy Business

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University of Colorado System

Fundamentals of Global Energy Business

304 ratings

Learn about diverse and integrated markets for primary energy, and the essential considerations driving business leaders and policy makers in development of global energy resources.

From the lesson

Key Capabilities for Energy Business - Alternative Resources

A range of technological and commercial factors determine accessibility and utilization of unconventional energy resources. These lectures review considerations essential to the development of alternative sources of energy, including nuclear and various renewable resources.

Nuclear Value Chain13:43

Nuclear Market Activity8:39

Nuclear Business Issues6:18

Meet the Instructors

Michael J. Orlando
Lecturer
Global Energy Management, Business School

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Let's just conclude by talking about a few of

the factors that are you know maybe, more generally than

uranium driving growth and in nuclear and some of

the factors that could be discouraging investments in this sector.

The growth factors of course are it's

a relatively clean technology as we mentioned before.

So this is definitely one of the things you

read about all the time, you actually [SOUND] might

even marvel at the capacity of this technology to

produce the amount of energy that, that it can.

But in addition to that if you read maybe popular science

magazines and things, or search around on the web, I'd encourage you to do that.

There are a number of new technologies that are just making nuclear

power so much more efficient and safer than it's ever been in history.

So different fuels or like [UNKNOWN] Instead of uranium or different [SOUND]

methods of, of processing the fuel into pebbles.

Or what's called fast breeder that are, might much more efficient use of

the fuel, for instance in a conventional reactor, the amount

of uranium in a fuel rod, in a

new fuel rod might be up to 6 or 7% or something that's not terribly high.

When the uranium 235 drops below 3%, that fuel

rod is considered spent and needs to be changed out.

So fully 50% of the material that we think of as fuel is not even going to be used

it's just going to have to be discarded and stored and, and things like that.

So, any of these technological improvements

that improve the efficiency you know, have

a very encouraging potentially impact on the sector.

Especially when you think about the

factors discouraging growth in this sector, because

one of the main ones is, where are we going to put the waste?

Okay, so the extent that you could minimize the

waste that would be obviously a, a huge advantage.

I, but because of concerns about waste and because of

you know several throughout history, as I mentioned, you know,

no matter how safe we, we make this, the question

is have we, have we designed these facilities to handle some

worst case types of environmental, weather,

and potentially Terror type of events.

And if we haven't, we in ca, in some

cases we've seen you know, a couple of disasters.

And these disasters can be, you know, quite, quite catastrophic.

So because of concerns about the long term

you know, where would we store the waste material?

Which hopefully are being improved by some efficiencies over here on the growth side.

And, concerns that can we ever really figure

out how to design and manage these facilities

in a way that accounts for all the

potential bad things that could happen to them.

We've seen the costs associated with citing and permitting

become very high the time delay's very lengthy.

And this is probably, the, you know, the, the

most significant factor, although it's derivative of these others.

You know, the bottom line is the political environment is responding

to these significant, to these significant risks

and concerns associated with managing the technology.

And lastly, I just wanted to provide, we, we don't have much data to

turn to in thinking about, you know what labor markets look like in this industry.

But this is data, again, taken from the BLS employment projections, surveys and

projections, and you know, there are some natural, obvious players here.

They don't keep track of a lot of

categories unique to the nuclear power industry, but nuclear

engineers are essentially, you know, demand for nuclear

engineers is expected to stay flat and maybe decline.

Reactor operators also stay flat maybe decline the only group that we

see a little bit of an increase in is in these technicians.

So, you maybe, you can infer from these projections

what the BSLs at least building into their forecast is

continued pressure on you know, on probably sighting and

permitting and therefore any kind of growth in its industry.

So basically, in the struggle between factors that would

tend towards growth and factors that would tend towards decline.

You know, there is at least a number of folks betting against the growth and,

and not the the headwinds, the industry

facing are going to be much more significant to

the extent there's any growth at least in labor inputs going to be more the type

of occupations that would be used, that

would be needed to keep existing facilities running.

Not occupations that would be needed

to build new facilities, operate new facilities.

But you think more of the, the, you know the technicians here is being the

type of people you might want to you, you would be hiring greater numbers if

you're trying to extend the life of

exist, existing facilities, who've already, facilities that have

already been through the costly process of

permitting and siting and, and things like that.

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