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.
Nuclear Market Activity
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From the course by University of Colorado System
Fundamentals of Global Energy Business
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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.
Meet the Instructors
Michael J. OrlandoLecturer
Global Energy Management, Business School
So, let's take a look at where our reserves are.
And let's take a look at, at sort of where we're
getting our uranium and then where exactly we're putting it to use.
Around the world, Australia is a global leader in actual reserves in place.
Follow by Kazakhstan and then, you know, there's like a good dozen
countries that have, at least in form of, based on knowable
reserves, between one and somewhere under 10% of knowable reserves.
So, actually, uranium reserves globally, in some sense, are relatively
diffusely distributed around the globe, and, and understanding, you
know, in the context of just how little uranium it
would take to actually generate and satisfy power needs locally.
Availability of the reserves is not really
the thing that is driving production and utilization.
Pretty much you could probably self source, self source the, the
material, the fuel to, to nuclear power production if
you wanted to, because it is relatively diffusely distributed around the world.
You know again accepting, of course, that Australia had about a third of it.
So, this map shows the production from mines, from
uranium mines around the world, which actually shows a, a bit
of a contrast to the reserves listing that we saw earlier.
So, remember on reserves, Australia had fully a third of uranium reserves
but, you don't really need a lot of this stuff to create lots of power so, in some
sense, what really matters here is who's deciding to go through the costs and the
political coordination issues and to get everyone to
buy in an agreement to actually produce it.
So, about 60% of uranium mine production
currently taking place is in, about 60% is, is
coming from a combination of Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia right now.
The greatest concentration, and Kazakhstan alone, by the
way, produces well over a third of uranium.
I think this, these values were in 2010 maybe.
The greatest concentration of mined uranium you can, you can see from the map
as, you know, coming here, you know, roughly speaking, you can think in
general like the Soviet Bloc these former Soviet Bloc countries.
Together they produce nearly 50% of uranium being produced today.
If we look at use, we see, you know, very
wide variation in patterns of utilization across the coun, across the world.
So, this chart illustrates use of nuclear power
with countries ordered in proportion to their intensity
of nuclear energy generation in their national portfolio
of electrical, electrical generation on average across the world.
The world produces about 15% of its electrical power from nuclear, okay.
We see that France gets the largest share compared to any other nation.
You know, almost three quarters of its powers is coming from nuclear.
Okay.
Other countries with a significant share
of nuclear in their electrical portfolio include
former Soviet Block nations, eastern Nordic
countries and a few east Asian countries.
I think Japan and South Korea pop out in particular.
And then you see the U.S. here, the
largest consumer of electrical power in the world.
It gets about 20%.
So, you know, relatively sort of low by some of these leaders, but still above the
global average of 15, still above the global average of 15%.
This slide shows the, the use of,
the sort of the historical use of nuclear
power here in the US over the past.
I don't know.
What do we have here, 55 years or so, 60 years, something like that.
So, what you notice here is, you know, naturally the, the big
explosion, the sort of nuclear age taking off right here.
Okay, sometime in the late 70s, we have the Three Mile Island incident.
So, you see a bit of suspension of nuclear power use.
Or, at least, growth in power here.
An actual decline in the share that, the green line shows the percentage
or the share of total electricity in the U.S. produced by patented nuclear power.
The red line the amount.
And, so we actually see a decline in both the share and the
amount post Three Mile Island and then it's sort of picks up again.
I think we have Chernobyl somewhere around here.
Okay, little bit of concerns and suspension of growth there.
But actually, then, you know, since Chernobyl, sort of a, a decline
in the rate of growth of additions to our
nuclear power generation, and use.
So, pretty much all of the growth that's happened since the early 90s has been just
sufficient to maintain roughly 20% share
of nuclear in our overall national electrical portfolio.
And so the, you know, the amount of additions of capacity and, and plants has
pretty much just kept up with overall growth
in demand for electrical power in the US.
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Now, most plants in the US are located in the
Eastern US and to some extent, if we haven't had a
lot of growth in the last 20 or more years,
in nuclear generation capacity to some extent, maybe that makes sense.
You know.
Just think about where the bulk of the population was, in the US, 20 or
30 years ago, and probably a lot of these plant locations
reflect power demands and concerns
about deliverability that were raised back in the 70s and 80s.
And during, you know, when you see in the prior slide, each of those, of
those upticks, what you might do is compare
these and look at each of these upticks
In, sort of, these pic, pick ups in the pace.
Here and here, you would think those are probably the big growth spurt times
early to mid 70s and the early and mid 80s, and you probably see.
Some of that in the dates of the power,
the nuclear reactors that are illustrated on this slide and we haven't had a
lot of additions since the late 80s, that maybe a good
reason why we don't see much nuclear power elsewhere around the US.
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