https://preview.redd.it/f0g6dlsqiwf61.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a84d539f52e8dd8735eac1e3780df59868fd8b6
Dear community, I am the author of the following book which I have posted in its entirety for redditors on this channel.
I like to research my investments thoroughly, so the following is my thesis that this is a 'when, not if scenario'.
As not many seem to want to buy it on Amazon, I am making it available to read in posts below. Enjoy!
Due to reddit post size limits, it is in different posts starting on this post with Chapters 1-6
Link to Chapters 7-8
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le4myw/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Link to Chapters 9-11
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le4vku/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Link to Chapters 12-16
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le50o1/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
Planet Uranium A Beginners Guide to the Uranium Market in the 2020’s
Copyright © 2019 by Andre Pearce
All rights reserved.
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The power unleashed - A lightbulb moment
Chapter 2 The Millers - How to make Yellowcake
Chapter 3 The miners - To dig or to leach, that is the question
Chapter 4 The converters - How to make uranium gas
Chapter 5 The spinners - How to enrich uranium
Chapter 6 The French - What do cheese and uranium not share in common?
Chapter 7 The guardians of the prices - Contracts, spot, and futures
Chapter 8 The promises of a miner - How dreams differ from reality
Chapter 9 The Japanese - How it can really go sideways
Chapter 10 Underfeeding - ‘why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five’
Chapter 11 Moving parts - The art of thoughtful disagreement
Chapter 12 How to play this - From toe dipping to diving in head first
Chapter 13 Section 232 - A possible US fork
Chapter 14 Wall Street - How they plan every step to prey on you in this market
Chapter 15 Small Modular Reactors - Why less could be more
Chapter 16 Going forward - The learning curve
“When the market wants into gold stocks it’s like trying to force the contents of the Hoover Dam into a hose, in the case of uranium stocks, it’s more like a soda straw. it’s a very small market.” - Doug Casey
Introduction
In this book, I explain the fundamentals of the uranium market. Humans are not computers that process bits of data. Processing information is only part of what we do, and it is a lot easier if the information is presented in an interesting and engaging manner.
This book has been deliberately written to move from subject to subject without going so deeply into an area to the point where the reader is bored and loses interest in the details. We have all had teachers who were both, boring or engaging, and we know the difference well. So while the information contained in this book is accurate to the best of my knowledge, it is also designed to keep the reader engaged.
This book informs and educates readers on the uranium market and whether a retail investor should get involved. I have mined through a large amount of data and information in order to find the most relevant, and present it logically. This could form a foundation of information that might lead the reader to explore certain topics in more detail and assist them in their decision making. This book includes a background on the uranium players and the different parties involved in using this interesting element. These include explorers, miners, developers, processors through to the investors and pundits. It also includes a macro view of where uranium is being used currently and going forward into the future. I also present the arguments both for and against investing in uranium, in order to equip the readers with both sides of the argument.
Finally, a disclaimer on investment/speculation advice. No part of any information herein is financial advice, neither is it a suggestion or anything else that can be considered advice to invest in any particular company or adopt a particular strategy. The views expressed herein are of the author and no other person and are for educational purposes only. One needs to make their own decisions based on the best information available to them. Enjoy the read.
Chapter 1 The power unleashed - A lightbulb moment
So it’s all about electricity. Imagine for a moment that you run an electricity generating plant. Most power stations want to generate steam to push turbines that generate electricity. To generate steam, you need heat, and for heat, humans typically burn things - coal, gas, oil and the like. Uranium can turn turbines too, we’ll discuss how this happens later. According to the World Nuclear Association, globally 26,672 TWh of electricity was generated in 2018. 2,724 Twh of that was generated by nuclear power. That's around 10% of the world’s electricity.
So let’s visit our imaginary power plant where we have a single 100-Watt light bulb which we want to light up. We would like to see how long the bulb would stay lit with a kilogram of three materials, - coal, oil, and uranium. So you burn your kilo of coal and it turns the turbine and the 100W bulb comes on and it will stay on for around 80 hours, that's around 3 days. Not bad. Next, you burn a kilogram of oil and it turns the turbine and bulb comes on and it will stay on for 5 days. Better than coal, right?. So finally we come to the kilo of uranium which we won’t burn/combust - the proper term is fission. Anyway the turbine kicks on and the light bulb switches on. And we wait, not 5 days, not 5 months, not 5 years, not even 5 centuries, but 27,397 years. At that point in time, the light bulb will go off, of course, you may need to replace the bulb a few times during that period.
Now just to reinforce the point, let’s order the equivalent of what a kilogram of uranium can do for a 100-Watt bulb in coal and oil. So first the trucks of coal arrive, the delivery company has decided to send the shipment using a fairly standard 25-tonne ten-wheeler truck. This will take a while as you’ve had to order 14,000 kgs. After standing in the yard watching 560 trucks drive by and unload and you’re starting to wonder if you have a hint of black lung and why you have a kind of gritty taste in your mouth. Next, we want to get our hands on oil, again the equivalent of a kilogram of uranium. We’re gonna need some kind of tank to store it on site. You order 10,000 kg which is around 9,200 liters so one truck should do it to fill the tank you have on site.
Some of the numbers for the above example were taken from the European Nuclear Society website if you want to have a look at that as it runs the numbers in a few other ways too. There are a few issues with the comparison. First, it assumes that combustion or fission of materials is 100% efficient, that is to say, all the energy from them is changed to electricity. The reality due to the law of thermodynamics is that energy losses come about through heat and other losses thus reducing how long the light bulb will stay on for.
Another issue with the comparison is that nowadays you can't exactly take a pick and shovel and dig up a kilogram of coal, put it in a bucket and take it your power plant for the 3 days of light. Oil is no longer available on the surface to be scooped up with a jug. Once you have extracted it, usually from deep below ground it needs to be refined. Uranium, however, is by far the most complicated of the three when it comes to getting it to a state where it can be used at the power plant. The reason for this is because it starts its journey to the power plant as a bunch of rocks and needs to be transformed into a product that can be used in the power plant.
Leaving aside the losses mentioned and refining required, our imaginary power plant / light bulb experiment does, however, illustrate the amazing and almost incomparable energy in a kilogram of uranium in relation to oil and coal. If I wanted to reduce mining footprints and transport costs I know which one I would pick (excuse the pun).
So it’s time to leave our imaginary power plant and visit a real nuclear power plant. By the way I did say earlier that it’s all about electricity, saying that, there are also nuclear applications to the medical field which are pretty small in size, and of course military applications which involve blowing things up with some rather unpleasant consequences (think mushrooms), and also running machinery (mostly military). The military applications have had an impact on uranium markets historically and we can get into that later too.
Just in case you were wondering about the coal and oil side of things, according to the World Coal Association, 38% of electricity is generated by coal (I think they have thrown peat in there too as part of that number). It also shows oil as generating 4% of global supply and gas 23%. In that context, nuclear is holding its own at 10% of electricity generation.
Chapter 2 The Millers - How to make Yellowcake
The trouble with uranium used in a power plant is that it doesn’t just come in one-kilogram blocks. It’s probably most popularly recognized in 55-gallon barrels and is called yellowcake (or urania). The barrels typically weigh around 400 kgs and getting to Yelowcake stage is only one of a number of stages to get the uranium ready for the power plant. There are a few ways to get a barrel of yellowcake.
Orano is a large player in the uranium industry and I like their description for its simplicity: “Start with high-grade uranium ore that has already been crushed. Leach it, oxidize it and decant it before clarifying it. Add solvents, then precipitate this mixture. The result is a yellow solution called yellowcake. Put it in an 800°C oven and bake until it is a grey powder with a uranium content of 85%. Carefully place in drums before sending it to the conversion plant of your choice”
Now there may be a few terms that we need to explain here; ore, grade, and solvents. Ore is basically rock or soil that contains uranium. High grade means that there is uranium present in the ore at percentages above 2% or 20,000 parts per million (ppm). Typically in most soils, rocks, and water, uranium is present, but in levels below 5 ppm. So >2% is high and the mines with the highest grade get up close to 20%. The third term we want to understand here is solvents. Solvents are chemicals that can dissolve stuff, you may have baking soda in your kitchen, and that could be just the trick for the correct ore. The rest of the technical terms above probably refer to processes that are required to make Yellowcake and will get a chemical engineer excited but we can pass on getting too deeply into that.
Making Yellowcake is not difficult. If you want to see people doing this for fun you can go on YouTube and you will come across people ‘brewing’ homemade concoctions. Here is an example ‘recipe’ of what’s out there: Get a bunch of rocks with uranium in them, crush it up into a powder and pour some hydrochloric acid on to them. From that, you will get a dark green liquid although that color is ore dependent. Then in different stages and varying amounts you add hypochlorite, ammonium hydroxide, and ammonia. At this point, a vacuum filtration system is required to separate the sludge (the good stuff) from the rest of the potion. The sludge is then mixed with a carbonate leach solution. This goes back into the vacuum filter. This time it’s not the sludge that is required but rather the transparent green liquid. Add to this hydrochloric acid and maybe some sodium carbonate or bicarbonate to control pH levels. Heat that and add hydrogen peroxide. Filtration follows and then it is dried out and hey presto you have Yellowcake.
Again if you can do this on YouTube it’s not rocket science, although YouTube does have videos on rocket science too. While there are more complicated ‘baking recipes’ out there and while it is relatively simple, it can take time, and during the whole process pH levels need to be controlled. Other processes and chemicals may or may not be involved depending on the ore body. Making Yellowcake may also sound very unhealthy, but donning a pair of gloves and making an effort not to eat or snort any of it should suffice to the point where you should survive just fine, or at least to the point where one could post a video online of one's achievements.
It’s worth mentioning that Yellowcake these days is not actually yellow. The ‘yellow’ was from earlier operations which had more impurities. These days it’s a ‘blackcake’ or ‘browncake’, which I’m sure you would agree doesn’t sound half as nice as Yellowcake. The chemical name for the black/brown cake called Yellowcake is called uranium oxide, around 20% of this is various compounds that we’re not too interested in, but 80% is the good stuff, and goes by the name triuranium octoxide or more popularly U3O8 . From this point forward, I will refer to this as U3O8.
Chapter 3 The miners - To dig or to leach, that is the question
While we may imagine men and machines above or below ground digging up rocks and sending it to the mill for processing into Yellowcake there is also another way to get the uranium out of the ground. Earlier we mentioned crushing rocks and adding a leachate such as hydrochloric acid or even baking soda which can be used in some places, but this can be done both underground and above ground too.
For the above ground technique, you dig out your rocks from below ground or from an open pit, dump it somewhere convenient and then pour some form of solvent on it to percolate through the rocks. Think networks of pipes on a pile of rocks that you are trying to irrigate, but not to grow flowers. To prevent the groundwater below becoming contaminated some kind of barrier or layer needs to be installed between your rocks and the existing ground. This layer can be installed much the same way as a very large plastic tray placed at a slight angle would do the trick and allow you to siphon off the liquid which is uranium-rich leachate, that is the material which you can now make Yellowcake from. Plastic trays don’t usually come in the sizes required for this type of operation so the liner at the bottom is usually a layer of soil high in the right type of clay which doesn’t allow leakage to the ground below to prevent contamination to the groundwater below.
This technique can also be employed underground but in this instance, a large plastic tray below the area you are working is not so easy. Instead, you drill down to the underground zone you are interested in, pump your leachate chemicals down there and then somewhere between your various injection wells, you start drawing up the uranium-rich leachate material to the surface to also make Yellowcake from it.
The underground method which is called various things such as in-situ recovery or in-situ leaching, maybe more complicated by the fact that there is a local aquifer in the area. An aquifer is a permeable layer of rock, soil or sediment that contains water. Put simply - its an underground body of water, and people and animals drink from them so it’s not a good look to contaminate them with lots of uranium or baking soda for that matter.
With mining there always seems to be a catch, big holes in the ground which don’t look too good or underground pollution with a small surface footprint, it would seem nothing is simple or easy, and obviously, there are both advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost and environmental impact amongst other factors. In case you are still imagining people in mines, presently (2019) for the US there are zero operating underground mines and there are zero operating open pit mines, but there are six in-situ leaching facilities in operation. Consider that in the context of a country that generates 19% of its electricity by using uranium. It also indicates when times get tough with regard to uranium prices, leaching facilities seems to be the way to go during a downturn and must do even better during an upturn.
According to the World Nuclear Association, over two-thirds of uranium mining is done in only three countries - Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia. It is likely the last two countries are more familiar to you but Kazakhstan not so much. To give you an idea of where it is - if you were in China and were heading north towards Mongolia but took a left, you’d probably end up there.
Chapter 4 The converters - How to make uranium gas
So we have mined it, we have milled it - that is turned it into Yellowcake and it’s still not ready for generating electricity so next, we need to do some conversion. Broadly speaking this is the third step in the process. With regard to this step, in the US, we don’t have many options, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission there is only one plant in the country in the state of Illinois. U3O8/Yellowcake goes through the gate and uranium hexafluoride (UF6 ) comes out. (Again from here on in, this will be written as UF6).
According to the processors in Illinois, the process they use involves five stages: sizing, reduction, hydrofluorination, fluorination, and distillation. Without going into too many details of these stages whatever it is that they do, the product comes out at 99.99% purified liquid which, at that kind of purity, it sounds like they know what they are doing. After cooling for five days it crystallizes to a white substance which apparently looks like rock salt.
This process is called the dry fluoride process. Globally speaking, the most popular method is called the wet method. Typically more chemicals are added to the Yellowcake and eventually we end up with hexafluoride (UF6), it takes two separate facilities to use this method which sounds more cumbersome than the dry method used in Illinois.
This crystalline ‘dodgy looking rock salt’ remains in that state until it hits a temperature of around fifty to sixty degrees Celsius at which point it becomes a gas and that is what we need for the next stage - uranium enrichment. Although per kilogram, uranium yields way more energy than coal, we are starting to get an insight into how complicated it is versus shoveling coal into a furnace to make electricity.
There are only five countries that convert uranium commercially, the US, Russia, Canada, France, and China. We say commercially because there are other nations out there that have their own uranium conversion capacity.
Chapter 5 The spinners - How to enrich uranium
At this stage, we are down to two components U235 and U238 . (Yet again I’m going to change these to upper case). U238 makes up 99.3% and U235 0.7%. The two are chemically identical, they also both have 93 protons but U235 has 143 neutrons and U238 has 146 neutrons. The three neutron variation makes a whole world of difference. The reason this stage is called enrichment is that the 0.7% U235 needs to be higher for generating electricity - typically at 3-5% levels. If we kept enriching it to say above 80%, then we are into bomb making territory. So how do we get our U235 from 0.7% to say 3.5%?
There are a few methods but currently the most popular is the centrifuge. Earlier we said above 50 - 60 degrees Celsius, UF6 turns into gas. So we spin the gas and by doing so we can separate the U235 from the U238. Imagine being on a playground roundabout and spinning really fast. The faster you go the more chance that you fall off. The fall entails being forced to the outer edge and then being thrown off. This is called centrifugal force. If you are near the center of the roundabout the force doesn’t have as powerful an effect. The U238 is heavier and during the fun times spinning in the centrifuge, gets thrown more quickly to the outside than its lighter brother U235.
So how fast do the centrifuges spin? Well, a washing machine at the end of its cycle does a final spin at around 700 - 1500 revolutions per minute (RPM), a new Lamborghini engine does around 8,000 RPM and a jet engine can get up to 25,000. But a centrifuge gets up to 90,000 RPM. That is equivalent to 1500 revolutions a second. It spins in a vacuum to reduce friction with a magnetic bearing on the top and only one point of contact with a needlelike bearing at the bottom.
Adding heat to the bottom of the centrifuge makes the lighter U235 migrate to the top and can then be scooped away. Within a centrifuge, there can be a temperature differential of 300 degrees.
There is only one enrichment plant in the US today and it is located in New Mexico. It’s noteworthy that a country which relies on uranium for 19% of its electricity has only one conversion plant as mentioned earlier, and also, only one enrichment plant in the country. That might explain why 93% of the uranium delivered to the reactors (power plants) in the US come from abroad.
Next, our uranium needs to go to a fuel fabrication plant.
At this point, we have mined it, milled it into Yellowcake (U3O8), converted it into UF6 and spun it into an enriched 3-5% U235. Now we take the enriched UF6 to a plant that turns it into pellets for the power plant. Here it is turned into uranium dioxide powder and the powder is compacted into pellets. This is used in rods in the power plant to generate heat for the turbines to make electricity.
So this brings us back to where we started - the nuclear plant with our enriched uranium, finally we are ready to generate some heat to turn some turbines to generate electricity. As we have seen so far, it takes several processes to make uranium user ready and is costly in terms of energy, especially when spinning it at high speeds.
Chapter 6 The French - What do cheese and uranium not share in common?
Historically France is known for making a lot of cheese and wine. It is also known for making a lot of electricity by means of nuclear power plants. Around 75% of its electricity comes from nuclear power. After the US it has the most nuclear reactors with 58. Based on our earlier discussion involving the processes in making uranium ‘reactor ready’, you may think uranium generated electricity is costly. However, according to the IEA, 2016 residential electricity in France cost around $180/Mwh. Comparing that to its neighbors the UK at $200, Italy $275 and Germany $325, France is the cheapest of its big neighbors and obviously, that is directly related to the way it generates electricity. Those figures probably also explain why France is the largest net exporter of electricity in the world and makes a cool 3 billion euros a year from it.
So how did France pull off this achievement? Apparently, there was an oil crisis in 1973 due to OPEC having an oil embargo against countries that were considered to be supporting Israel in the Yom-Kippur war. Prices of oil went from $3 to $12. Imagine if oil, which is around, say $70 today went to $280, you can understand why they called it a crisis. Anyway, out of crisis comes opportunity and France decided to build nuclear plants to avoid a repeat situation in the future.
Standardization
Apparently, Charles De Gaulle once asked: “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?”. On the other hand, the government-owned ‘Electric Utility Company’ (EDF) has a history of standardization. Standardization is when you copy and paste as much stuff as possible - think Ikea furniture. It looks good, but it’s the same stuff in flat pack over and over again - easy to manufacture and ship, cheap to buy. In comparison, if you go to a joiner and ask him to make you a piece of bespoke furniture, think slower and more expensive.
So copying and pasting nuclear power plants could be the way to go, but there are some disadvantages. One being, if the technology moves forward and you don’t, you could pay a higher price, especially during the operation and maintenance phases of the life of the plant. If safety regulations change in the future that might stifle standardization as you need to make adjustments for new regulations.
As far back as 1948, the French had a standardization policy for its oil and coal power plants. A similar approach was taken with their post-1973 nuclear power plant ‘design and build’ operations, resulting in the highest degree of standardization of nuclear reactors in the world. All units are pressurized water reactors and there are three types. According to the IAEA this reduced costs of engineering studies, components and construction costs. We’re talking 30-40% construction cost reductions. The parts that were not standardized are foundation design, grid connection, and the heat sink. Without going off on too much of a tangent, a heat sink is a system that absorbs heat as required without raising the temperature of the heat sink itself. Think of pouring a kettle of boiling water into an icy swimming pool, it isn’t going to make much of a difference to the temperature of the swimming pool. Now remember Fukushima and how it was situated practically on the beach - the sea can be a great heat sink until it turns into a large wave combined with an earthquake - but that’s another story for later.
Returning to French standardization the IAEA also says that technical specification, safety reporting, and procedures are for the most part standardized too. Copying and pasting is all fine unless of course, you are copying the same defects throughout the fleet of reactors. A lot of this information is taken from a 1999 paper by Roche on plant standardization and it’s well worth a read. To give a few more interesting points from the paper, it states some interesting facts and figures.
The first is engineering manpower for design, quality control and assurance for a first of a kind unit, expect to spend 5 million hours, and now copy and paste that and you are down to one million hours. It also discussed backfitting which is when you realize you have to go back to standard plants and fix defects (at least it’s likely to be the same defect in each plant) that you have copied and pasted from using a standard design. Even with this risk, the costs of backfitting were found to be less than 10% of the construction costs which is still less than the 30 - 40% construction cost savings from standardization. I had to include the final sentence in the conclusion of the paper which I suggest you read in a heavy French accent: “This is precisely what has lead the utilities of other countries to follow our standardization policy”. To borrow a French proverb: “There is no pride like that of a beggar grown rich”.
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
submitted by definitelyunshore to UraniumSqueeze [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/f0g6dlsqiwf61.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a84d539f52e8dd8735eac1e3780df59868fd8b6
Dear community, I am the author of the following book which I have posted in its entirety for redditors on this channel.
I like to research my investments thoroughly, so the following is my thesis that this is a 'when, not if scenario'.
As not many seem to want to buy it on Amazon, I am making it available to read in posts below. Enjoy!
Due to reddit post size limits, it is in different posts starting on this post with Chapters 1-6
Link to Chapters 7-8
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le4myw/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Link to Chapters 9-11
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le4vku/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
Link to Chapters 12-16
https://www.reddit.com/UraniumSqueeze/comments/le50o1/planet_uranium_a_beginners_guide_to_the_uranium/
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Uranium-Beginners-Guide-Market-ebook/dp/B07TCHF7T7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8
Planet Uranium A Beginners Guide to the Uranium Market in the 2020’s
Copyright © 2019 by Andre Pearce
All rights reserved.
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The power unleashed - A lightbulb moment
Chapter 2 The Millers - How to make Yellowcake
Chapter 3 The miners - To dig or to leach, that is the question
Chapter 4 The converters - How to make uranium gas
Chapter 5 The spinners - How to enrich uranium
Chapter 6 The French - What do cheese and uranium not share in common?
Chapter 7 The guardians of the prices - Contracts, spot, and futures
Chapter 8 The promises of a miner - How dreams differ from reality
Chapter 9 The Japanese - How it can really go sideways
Chapter 10 Underfeeding - ‘why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five’
Chapter 11 Moving parts - The art of thoughtful disagreement
Chapter 12 How to play this - From toe dipping to diving in head first
Chapter 13 Section 232 - A possible US fork
Chapter 14 Wall Street - How they plan every step to prey on you in this market
Chapter 15 Small Modular Reactors - Why less could be more
Chapter 16 Going forward - The learning curve
“When the market wants into gold stocks it’s like trying to force the contents of the Hoover Dam into a hose, in the case of uranium stocks, it’s more like a soda straw. it’s a very small market.” - Doug Casey
Introduction
In this book, I explain the fundamentals of the uranium market. Humans are not computers that process bits of data. Processing information is only part of what we do, and it is a lot easier if the information is presented in an interesting and engaging manner.
This book has been deliberately written to move from subject to subject without going so deeply into an area to the point where the reader is bored and loses interest in the details. We have all had teachers who were both, boring or engaging, and we know the difference well. So while the information contained in this book is accurate to the best of my knowledge, it is also designed to keep the reader engaged.
This book informs and educates readers on the uranium market and whether a retail investor should get involved. I have mined through a large amount of data and information in order to find the most relevant, and present it logically. This could form a foundation of information that might lead the reader to explore certain topics in more detail and assist them in their decision making. This book includes a background on the uranium players and the different parties involved in using this interesting element. These include explorers, miners, developers, processors through to the investors and pundits. It also includes a macro view of where uranium is being used currently and going forward into the future. I also present the arguments both for and against investing in uranium, in order to equip the readers with both sides of the argument.
Finally, a disclaimer on investment/speculation advice. No part of any information herein is financial advice, neither is it a suggestion or anything else that can be considered advice to invest in any particular company or adopt a particular strategy. The views expressed herein are of the author and no other person and are for educational purposes only. One needs to make their own decisions based on the best information available to them. Enjoy the read.
Chapter 1 The power unleashed - A lightbulb moment
So it’s all about electricity. Imagine for a moment that you run an electricity generating plant. Most power stations want to generate steam to push turbines that generate electricity. To generate steam, you need heat, and for heat, humans typically burn things - coal, gas, oil and the like. Uranium can turn turbines too, we’ll discuss how this happens later. According to the World Nuclear Association, globally 26,672 TWh of electricity was generated in 2018. 2,724 Twh of that was generated by nuclear power. That's around 10% of the world’s electricity.
So let’s visit our imaginary power plant where we have a single 100-Watt light bulb which we want to light up. We would like to see how long the bulb would stay lit with a kilogram of three materials, - coal, oil, and uranium. So you burn your kilo of coal and it turns the turbine and the 100W bulb comes on and it will stay on for around 80 hours, that's around 3 days. Not bad. Next, you burn a kilogram of oil and it turns the turbine and bulb comes on and it will stay on for 5 days. Better than coal, right?. So finally we come to the kilo of uranium which we won’t burn/combust - the proper term is fission. Anyway the turbine kicks on and the light bulb switches on. And we wait, not 5 days, not 5 months, not 5 years, not even 5 centuries, but 27,397 years. At that point in time, the light bulb will go off, of course, you may need to replace the bulb a few times during that period.
Now just to reinforce the point, let’s order the equivalent of what a kilogram of uranium can do for a 100-Watt bulb in coal and oil. So first the trucks of coal arrive, the delivery company has decided to send the shipment using a fairly standard 25-tonne ten-wheeler truck. This will take a while as you’ve had to order 14,000 kgs. After standing in the yard watching 560 trucks drive by and unload and you’re starting to wonder if you have a hint of black lung and why you have a kind of gritty taste in your mouth. Next, we want to get our hands on oil, again the equivalent of a kilogram of uranium. We’re gonna need some kind of tank to store it on site. You order 10,000 kg which is around 9,200 liters so one truck should do it to fill the tank you have on site.
Some of the numbers for the above example were taken from the European Nuclear Society website if you want to have a look at that as it runs the numbers in a few other ways too. There are a few issues with the comparison. First, it assumes that combustion or fission of materials is 100% efficient, that is to say, all the energy from them is changed to electricity. The reality due to the law of thermodynamics is that energy losses come about through heat and other losses thus reducing how long the light bulb will stay on for.
Another issue with the comparison is that nowadays you can't exactly take a pick and shovel and dig up a kilogram of coal, put it in a bucket and take it your power plant for the 3 days of light. Oil is no longer available on the surface to be scooped up with a jug. Once you have extracted it, usually from deep below ground it needs to be refined. Uranium, however, is by far the most complicated of the three when it comes to getting it to a state where it can be used at the power plant. The reason for this is because it starts its journey to the power plant as a bunch of rocks and needs to be transformed into a product that can be used in the power plant.
Leaving aside the losses mentioned and refining required, our imaginary power plant / light bulb experiment does, however, illustrate the amazing and almost incomparable energy in a kilogram of uranium in relation to oil and coal. If I wanted to reduce mining footprints and transport costs I know which one I would pick (excuse the pun).
So it’s time to leave our imaginary power plant and visit a real nuclear power plant. By the way I did say earlier that it’s all about electricity, saying that, there are also nuclear applications to the medical field which are pretty small in size, and of course military applications which involve blowing things up with some rather unpleasant consequences (think mushrooms), and also running machinery (mostly military). The military applications have had an impact on uranium markets historically and we can get into that later too.
Just in case you were wondering about the coal and oil side of things, according to the World Coal Association, 38% of electricity is generated by coal (I think they have thrown peat in there too as part of that number). It also shows oil as generating 4% of global supply and gas 23%. In that context, nuclear is holding its own at 10% of electricity generation.
Chapter 2 The Millers - How to make Yellowcake
The trouble with uranium used in a power plant is that it doesn’t just come in one-kilogram blocks. It’s probably most popularly recognized in 55-gallon barrels and is called yellowcake (or urania). The barrels typically weigh around 400 kgs and getting to Yelowcake stage is only one of a number of stages to get the uranium ready for the power plant. There are a few ways to get a barrel of yellowcake.
Orano is a large player in the uranium industry and I like their description for its simplicity: “Start with high-grade uranium ore that has already been crushed. Leach it, oxidize it and decant it before clarifying it. Add solvents, then precipitate this mixture. The result is a yellow solution called yellowcake. Put it in an 800°C oven and bake until it is a grey powder with a uranium content of 85%. Carefully place in drums before sending it to the conversion plant of your choice”
Now there may be a few terms that we need to explain here; ore, grade, and solvents. Ore is basically rock or soil that contains uranium. High grade means that there is uranium present in the ore at percentages above 2% or 20,000 parts per million (ppm). Typically in most soils, rocks, and water, uranium is present, but in levels below 5 ppm. So >2% is high and the mines with the highest grade get up close to 20%. The third term we want to understand here is solvents. Solvents are chemicals that can dissolve stuff, you may have baking soda in your kitchen, and that could be just the trick for the correct ore. The rest of the technical terms above probably refer to processes that are required to make Yellowcake and will get a chemical engineer excited but we can pass on getting too deeply into that.
Making Yellowcake is not difficult. If you want to see people doing this for fun you can go on YouTube and you will come across people ‘brewing’ homemade concoctions. Here is an example ‘recipe’ of what’s out there: Get a bunch of rocks with uranium in them, crush it up into a powder and pour some hydrochloric acid on to them. From that, you will get a dark green liquid although that color is ore dependent. Then in different stages and varying amounts you add hypochlorite, ammonium hydroxide, and ammonia. At this point, a vacuum filtration system is required to separate the sludge (the good stuff) from the rest of the potion. The sludge is then mixed with a carbonate leach solution. This goes back into the vacuum filter. This time it’s not the sludge that is required but rather the transparent green liquid. Add to this hydrochloric acid and maybe some sodium carbonate or bicarbonate to control pH levels. Heat that and add hydrogen peroxide. Filtration follows and then it is dried out and hey presto you have Yellowcake.
Again if you can do this on YouTube it’s not rocket science, although YouTube does have videos on rocket science too. While there are more complicated ‘baking recipes’ out there and while it is relatively simple, it can take time, and during the whole process pH levels need to be controlled. Other processes and chemicals may or may not be involved depending on the ore body. Making Yellowcake may also sound very unhealthy, but donning a pair of gloves and making an effort not to eat or snort any of it should suffice to the point where you should survive just fine, or at least to the point where one could post a video online of one's achievements.
It’s worth mentioning that Yellowcake these days is not actually yellow. The ‘yellow’ was from earlier operations which had more impurities. These days it’s a ‘blackcake’ or ‘browncake’, which I’m sure you would agree doesn’t sound half as nice as Yellowcake. The chemical name for the black/brown cake called Yellowcake is called uranium oxide, around 20% of this is various compounds that we’re not too interested in, but 80% is the good stuff, and goes by the name triuranium octoxide or more popularly U3O8 . From this point forward, I will refer to this as U3O8.
Chapter 3 The miners - To dig or to leach, that is the question
While we may imagine men and machines above or below ground digging up rocks and sending it to the mill for processing into Yellowcake there is also another way to get the uranium out of the ground. Earlier we mentioned crushing rocks and adding a leachate such as hydrochloric acid or even baking soda which can be used in some places, but this can be done both underground and above ground too.
For the above ground technique, you dig out your rocks from below ground or from an open pit, dump it somewhere convenient and then pour some form of solvent on it to percolate through the rocks. Think networks of pipes on a pile of rocks that you are trying to irrigate, but not to grow flowers. To prevent the groundwater below becoming contaminated some kind of barrier or layer needs to be installed between your rocks and the existing ground. This layer can be installed much the same way as a very large plastic tray placed at a slight angle would do the trick and allow you to siphon off the liquid which is uranium-rich leachate, that is the material which you can now make Yellowcake from. Plastic trays don’t usually come in the sizes required for this type of operation so the liner at the bottom is usually a layer of soil high in the right type of clay which doesn’t allow leakage to the ground below to prevent contamination to the groundwater below.
This technique can also be employed underground but in this instance, a large plastic tray below the area you are working is not so easy. Instead, you drill down to the underground zone you are interested in, pump your leachate chemicals down there and then somewhere between your various injection wells, you start drawing up the uranium-rich leachate material to the surface to also make Yellowcake from it.
The underground method which is called various things such as in-situ recovery or in-situ leaching, maybe more complicated by the fact that there is a local aquifer in the area. An aquifer is a permeable layer of rock, soil or sediment that contains water. Put simply - its an underground body of water, and people and animals drink from them so it’s not a good look to contaminate them with lots of uranium or baking soda for that matter.
With mining there always seems to be a catch, big holes in the ground which don’t look too good or underground pollution with a small surface footprint, it would seem nothing is simple or easy, and obviously, there are both advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost and environmental impact amongst other factors. In case you are still imagining people in mines, presently (2019) for the US there are zero operating underground mines and there are zero operating open pit mines, but there are six in-situ leaching facilities in operation. Consider that in the context of a country that generates 19% of its electricity by using uranium. It also indicates when times get tough with regard to uranium prices, leaching facilities seems to be the way to go during a downturn and must do even better during an upturn.
According to the World Nuclear Association, over two-thirds of uranium mining is done in only three countries - Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia. It is likely the last two countries are more familiar to you but Kazakhstan not so much. To give you an idea of where it is - if you were in China and were heading north towards Mongolia but took a left, you’d probably end up there.
Chapter 4 The converters - How to make uranium gas
So we have mined it, we have milled it - that is turned it into Yellowcake and it’s still not ready for generating electricity so next, we need to do some conversion. Broadly speaking this is the third step in the process. With regard to this step, in the US, we don’t have many options, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission there is only one plant in the country in the state of Illinois. U3O8/Yellowcake goes through the gate and uranium hexafluoride (UF6 ) comes out. (Again from here on in, this will be written as UF6).
According to the processors in Illinois, the process they use involves five stages: sizing, reduction, hydrofluorination, fluorination, and distillation. Without going into too many details of these stages whatever it is that they do, the product comes out at 99.99% purified liquid which, at that kind of purity, it sounds like they know what they are doing. After cooling for five days it crystallizes to a white substance which apparently looks like rock salt.
This process is called the dry fluoride process. Globally speaking, the most popular method is called the wet method. Typically more chemicals are added to the Yellowcake and eventually we end up with hexafluoride (UF6), it takes two separate facilities to use this method which sounds more cumbersome than the dry method used in Illinois.
This crystalline ‘dodgy looking rock salt’ remains in that state until it hits a temperature of around fifty to sixty degrees Celsius at which point it becomes a gas and that is what we need for the next stage - uranium enrichment. Although per kilogram, uranium yields way more energy than coal, we are starting to get an insight into how complicated it is versus shoveling coal into a furnace to make electricity.
There are only five countries that convert uranium commercially, the US, Russia, Canada, France, and China. We say commercially because there are other nations out there that have their own uranium conversion capacity.
Chapter 5 The spinners - How to enrich uranium
At this stage, we are down to two components U235 and U238 . (Yet again I’m going to change these to upper case). U238 makes up 99.3% and U235 0.7%. The two are chemically identical, they also both have 93 protons but U235 has 143 neutrons and U238 has 146 neutrons. The three neutron variation makes a whole world of difference. The reason this stage is called enrichment is that the 0.7% U235 needs to be higher for generating electricity - typically at 3-5% levels. If we kept enriching it to say above 80%, then we are into bomb making territory. So how do we get our U235 from 0.7% to say 3.5%?
There are a few methods but currently the most popular is the centrifuge. Earlier we said above 50 - 60 degrees Celsius, UF6 turns into gas. So we spin the gas and by doing so we can separate the U235 from the U238. Imagine being on a playground roundabout and spinning really fast. The faster you go the more chance that you fall off. The fall entails being forced to the outer edge and then being thrown off. This is called centrifugal force. If you are near the center of the roundabout the force doesn’t have as powerful an effect. The U238 is heavier and during the fun times spinning in the centrifuge, gets thrown more quickly to the outside than its lighter brother U235.
So how fast do the centrifuges spin? Well, a washing machine at the end of its cycle does a final spin at around 700 - 1500 revolutions per minute (RPM), a new Lamborghini engine does around 8,000 RPM and a jet engine can get up to 25,000. But a centrifuge gets up to 90,000 RPM. That is equivalent to 1500 revolutions a second. It spins in a vacuum to reduce friction with a magnetic bearing on the top and only one point of contact with a needlelike bearing at the bottom.
Adding heat to the bottom of the centrifuge makes the lighter U235 migrate to the top and can then be scooped away. Within a centrifuge, there can be a temperature differential of 300 degrees.
There is only one enrichment plant in the US today and it is located in New Mexico. It’s noteworthy that a country which relies on uranium for 19% of its electricity has only one conversion plant as mentioned earlier, and also, only one enrichment plant in the country. That might explain why 93% of the uranium delivered to the reactors (power plants) in the US come from abroad.
Next, our uranium needs to go to a fuel fabrication plant.
At this point, we have mined it, milled it into Yellowcake (U3O8), converted it into UF6 and spun it into an enriched 3-5% U235. Now we take the enriched UF6 to a plant that turns it into pellets for the power plant. Here it is turned into uranium dioxide powder and the powder is compacted into pellets. This is used in rods in the power plant to generate heat for the turbines to make electricity.
So this brings us back to where we started - the nuclear plant with our enriched uranium, finally we are ready to generate some heat to turn some turbines to generate electricity. As we have seen so far, it takes several processes to make uranium user ready and is costly in terms of energy, especially when spinning it at high speeds.
Chapter 6 The French - What do cheese and uranium not share in common?
Historically France is known for making a lot of cheese and wine. It is also known for making a lot of electricity by means of nuclear power plants. Around 75% of its electricity comes from nuclear power. After the US it has the most nuclear reactors with 58. Based on our earlier discussion involving the processes in making uranium ‘reactor ready’, you may think uranium generated electricity is costly. However, according to the IEA, 2016 residential electricity in France cost around $180/Mwh. Comparing that to its neighbors the UK at $200, Italy $275 and Germany $325, France is the cheapest of its big neighbors and obviously, that is directly related to the way it generates electricity. Those figures probably also explain why France is the largest net exporter of electricity in the world and makes a cool 3 billion euros a year from it.
So how did France pull off this achievement? Apparently, there was an oil crisis in 1973 due to OPEC having an oil embargo against countries that were considered to be supporting Israel in the Yom-Kippur war. Prices of oil went from $3 to $12. Imagine if oil, which is around, say $70 today went to $280, you can understand why they called it a crisis. Anyway, out of crisis comes opportunity and France decided to build nuclear plants to avoid a repeat situation in the future.
Standardization
Apparently, Charles De Gaulle once asked: “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?”. On the other hand, the government-owned ‘Electric Utility Company’ (EDF) has a history of standardization. Standardization is when you copy and paste as much stuff as possible - think Ikea furniture. It looks good, but it’s the same stuff in flat pack over and over again - easy to manufacture and ship, cheap to buy. In comparison, if you go to a joiner and ask him to make you a piece of bespoke furniture, think slower and more expensive.
So copying and pasting nuclear power plants could be the way to go, but there are some disadvantages. One being, if the technology moves forward and you don’t, you could pay a higher price, especially during the operation and maintenance phases of the life of the plant. If safety regulations change in the future that might stifle standardization as you need to make adjustments for new regulations.
As far back as 1948, the French had a standardization policy for its oil and coal power plants. A similar approach was taken with their post-1973 nuclear power plant ‘design and build’ operations, resulting in the highest degree of standardization of nuclear reactors in the world. All units are pressurized water reactors and there are three types. According to the IAEA this reduced costs of engineering studies, components and construction costs. We’re talking 30-40% construction cost reductions. The parts that were not standardized are foundation design, grid connection, and the heat sink. Without going off on too much of a tangent, a heat sink is a system that absorbs heat as required without raising the temperature of the heat sink itself. Think of pouring a kettle of boiling water into an icy swimming pool, it isn’t going to make much of a difference to the temperature of the swimming pool. Now remember Fukushima and how it was situated practically on the beach - the sea can be a great heat sink until it turns into a large wave combined with an earthquake - but that’s another story for later.
Returning to French standardization the IAEA also says that technical specification, safety reporting, and procedures are for the most part standardized too. Copying and pasting is all fine unless of course, you are copying the same defects throughout the fleet of reactors. A lot of this information is taken from a 1999 paper by Roche on plant standardization and it’s well worth a read. To give a few more interesting points from the paper, it states some interesting facts and figures.
The first is engineering manpower for design, quality control and assurance for a first of a kind unit, expect to spend 5 million hours, and now copy and paste that and you are down to one million hours. It also discussed backfitting which is when you realize you have to go back to standard plants and fix defects (at least it’s likely to be the same defect in each plant) that you have copied and pasted from using a standard design. Even with this risk, the costs of backfitting were found to be less than 10% of the construction costs which is still less than the 30 - 40% construction cost savings from standardization. I had to include the final sentence in the conclusion of the paper which I suggest you read in a heavy French accent: “This is precisely what has lead the utilities of other countries to follow our standardization policy”. To borrow a French proverb: “There is no pride like that of a beggar grown rich”.
If you click on the below link, I am hoping it will move my ebook up the amazon search ranks so non redditors can see it. Thanks.
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