Nature Vol. 296 29 April 1982 797 Britain's resources of coal and spent uranium fuel Robert Olby* n-IE United Kingdom is often described as as much as 50 x 109 tonnes of coal, more, rate of expansion of coal extraction of the a favoured nation in an increasingly he declared than Britain's total coal first half of that century (800 per cent). energy-hungry world - possessing riches reserves which, according to the National Such a drain on the country's "life-blood" of coal, and also North Sea oil and gas and Coal Board in 1969 were about 20 x 1()9 would exhaust its resources by AD 2034. On an abundance of spent fuel from nuclear tonnes. In 1976 Sir John's colleague T.N. the other hand, if, as Edward Hull reactors. Before the OPEC oil price rise of Marsham gave the more conservative coal believed, the coal industry would be 1973 it was generally accepted that equivalent of stored spent fuel as 20 x 109 incapable of raising more than 100 million dependence on coal should continue to tonnes, which Sir John later doubled to tons per annum, the nation still had eight decline in favour of oil and nuclear power. 40 x 109 tonnes a year. Between these two centuries of supplies. Meanwhile he looked The imposition of a fuel tax on oil in 1961 values came the Coal Board's new estimate to science to show how we could win energy marked an attempt to slow down the rate of of Britain's coal reserves at a little more from "the light and heat that is everywhere oil substitution, but nevertheless between than twice T.N. Marsham's figure. around us". Appealing to God's provi- 1959 and 1973 oil consumption more than doubled, and by 1973, 3 per cent of total primary energy was supplied by nuclear During the 1970s estimates of the United Kingdom's reserves of coal and spent power. The action of OPEC not only fuel from nuclear reactors, provided by the National Coal Board and Atomic strengthened the argument for nuclear Energy Authority respectively, have tended to steadily increase. It is tempting to power based on its contribution to national infer a connection between these estimates and the efforts of the NCB and AEA security but within the National Coal to promote their claims on government finance, by each predicting as long-lived Board it brought to the fore the already active concern to reassess the future of a future secure energy source as its rival. This article follows the history of the coal. various estimates and attempts to assess their credibility. In the board's Plan for Coal (1974), investment of £1,400 million over the following decade was proposed, £8 Dwindling resource dential character he assured his readers: million, of which was to be spent on an Although the long-term future of coal as "nor can we suppose that any part of the intensified programme of exploration to the United Kingdom's chief energy source Creator's universe has been regulated on so decide on the best sites for future was a matter for concern after the Second short-sighted a plan, that it shall become development. Three years later, this World War, the subject had long been disorganized because some of the elements expansionist mood became apparent to all debated. ln 1789 John Williams discussed necessary to its economy have failed". with the announcement of the board's the •'limited quantity of coal in Britain'' in The optimism of Edward Hull was revised estimates of the United Kingdom's his book Natural History of the Mineral matched by the stern realism of the "physically recoverable" reserves. To a Kingdom, and in the 1810 edition edited by economist and statistician, W. Stanley British Association audience the then-chief James Miller, Macnab's 1792 estimate of Jevons. In his celebrated work, The Coal geologist to the board, A. Michael Clarke, 360 years' supply was given. This figure Question (1865) he calculated the duration declared that economics and a lack of related only to the coalfields of of British coal on the basis of Hull's sufficient physically recoverable reserves Northumberland and Durham and the estimate of reserves and the extrapolation of coal were not the sole determinants of extraction rates of that period. In the into the future of the historic trend in coal the choice between coal and nuclear future nineteenth century the Oxford geologist, consumption, which had been 3.40Jo per bulk energy supplies for Britain and William Buckland, urged upon the annum over the decade 1851-61 . His Europe. Just because the era of cheap oil parliamentary committees of 1830 and conclusion was that: "Rather more than a had taken an unnecessary slice from the life 1835 the need to conserve coal. In 1830 the century of our present progress would of UK coal reserves, it was not the case that old sea-coal tax had been abolished, but exhaust our mines to the depth of 4,000 feet in the long-term we lacked adequate twelve years later Sir Robert Peel put a ... "Jevons was widely misunderstood as reserves. To go nuclear, he declared, was tariff on all exported coal. predicting exhaustion around the year not therefore inevitable. The subject of coal resources came 1975, whereas he was really trying to show The United Kingdom's reserves, which before Parliament once again when the that the nation's industrial expansion the World Energy Conference Survey of Commercial Treaty with France was could not continue for long at the rate then Energy Resources for the reference year debated in 1860. According to Article 11, current. Whilst there was still plentiful 1975 (published 1977) had shown as no duty was to be levied upon coal exported cheap coal attempts should be made to 3.887 x 109 tonnes, were now claimed by to France and other nations with whom the reduce the national debt, introduce a the board to be 45 x 109 tonnes. Small United Kingdom was at peace. It was the general system of education, and impose a wonder that this apparent dramatic change discussion of this treaty which caused far more general restriction on child caused adverse comment from the Edward Hull, member of the Geological labour. Such tasks would be more difficult Institution of Geological Sciences (IGS), Survey, to write The Coalfields of Britain to achieve when other countries reached letters in The Times and a tart editorial in (1860) in which he took a sanguine view. and surpassed the output of Britain's Nature. Introducing the mining limit of a depth of mines, becoming more competitive in In 1975 Sir John Hill, chairman of the 4,000 feet he reckoned England and Wales world markets (by 1%7 US pithead prices Atomic Energy Authority, drew attention had just under 59 x 109 tons, enough for were half those of Britain). Although to the potential energy source available in about a thousand years. In the second J evons foresaw this situation he could not, spent uranium fuel. With the fast reactor, edition of 1862 Hull included the Scottish as a free-trader, recommend the imposition he claimed, Britain's spent fuel could yield coalfields which raised his estimate to of an export tariff on coal. Therefore it was
•The University of Leeds Department of Philosophy, Leeds LS2 79.8 x 109 tons. Hull recoiled from the clear to him that the cost of coal extraction 9JT, UK. implications of continuing indefinitely the was a decisive factor in determining the
0028-0836/82/170797 .OS$01.00 tC> 1982 Macmillan Journals Ltd 798 Nature Vol. 296 29 April 1982 proportion of Britain's total coal resources advantageous position in regard to coal nization output had not grown as it had in which would be extracted. In the future we supplies, coal imports would become the continental mines. This was chiefly due to might, indeed, be able to mine coal at rule rather than the exception. Ominously the winding and undulating character of greater depths than at present, but only if the report concluded with the sentence: the underground lay-outs ("in-seam the price was competitive in world markets. "But it may well be doubted whether the mining") in Britain in contrast to the There was no question of the physical manufacturing supremacy of this kingdom straight roads which were driven through exhaustion of our coalfields- "though we can be maintained after the importation of the strata on the continent ("horizon may some day have to pay dear for fuel; it coal has become a necessity." These views mining"). The latter layout was easier to will never be positively wanting", he were not substantially revised by the Royal mechanize throughout. In Britain the work explained in the second edition of The Coal Commission of 1901, nor by anyone else. of the coal-filler at the end of the conveyor Question. Here Jevons was expressing Like their 1871 predecessors, the 1901 belt remained unmechanized and what later became a major feature of the commissioners misunderstood J evons. constituted the bottle neck in the system distinction between reserves and resources, They arrived at an estimate of total until the 1960s. the history of which is recounted below. available coal to 4,000 feet of nearly Although Britain did not suffer so Jevons drove his point home by a 142 x 1Q9 tons, 40.7 x 109 tons being in acutely after the Second World War as demonstration of the unique character of "unproved" coalfields. The approximate other European countries from coal coal. In a remarkable chapter on subtitutes agreement between the two commissions' shortages, demand was depressed by the in the third edition of his book (1906), he estimates, despite the quantity of coal system of allocation to consumers and discounted sunlight, peat, hot springs, extracted in the interval, was due in Jevons' there were frequent electricity cuts. Even water and wind power, the tides, son, Herbert's, opinion "to the well known allowing for the growth of the oil industry petroleum, hydroelectricity and hydrogen law that a number of unbiassed errors tend with Marshall Aid a long-term produced by the electrolysis of water. He to cancel one another". Nevertheless it reorganization of the coal industry would found it absurd to picture the 7,308 horses consolidated a growing consensus that be required to expand production. Such or 1,000 large windmills which would be Britain had at least 140 x 109 tons of which anticipated expansion did continue until required to power a modern factory like the the proportion in "proved" coalfields was 1958 when the threat of cheap oil began to great Dowlais ironworks, and he pointed to increasing due to continued exploration. bite into coal's traditional markets the fallacy of considering electricity as a Conversely, the consensus was developing confounding the prophets of its future source of self-creating power. The chief that as more of the best and most accessible demand. targets of this critique were the optimists, coal was removed, the remainder would be In such difficult circumstances mines Dionysius Lardner, Charles Babbage and increasingly difficult and expensive to were being closed at a rate of 40 a year, and Edward Hull. mine. Therefore, the 1901 commission the economically workable reserves were Sir John Herschel applauded Jevons. declared, the rate of increase of extraction, written off (depleted) at an alarming rate. "Such a work as yours", he wrote, "has "will soon be checked by natural causes" The result is seen in the figure below. long been wanted to dissipate completely so that there was "no present necessity to The value of 3. 87 x 109 tonnes appeared the delusion which so large a majority of restrict artificially the export of coal in in the 1974 World Energy Conference our countrymen labour under, of the order to conserve it for our home supply''. Survey of Energy Resources alongside a 'inexhaustibility of our mineral resources' In the inter-war period, the coal industry figure for total coal reserves of 99 x 109 etc. and the 'probability amounting to laboured under many difficulties, the chief tonnes and almost 163 x 109 tonnes for certainty' that science will ere long put us in of which was falling demand. By the time total resources. It did not escape the notice possession of a substitute for coal ... after of nationalization in 194 7 it was in a of the conference report that the United this let no man plead ignorance and say parlous state, having suffered from many Kingdom's recovery percentage was thus 'who would have thought it'." Herschel years of financial stringency and lack of only 4 per cent in contrast to West went on to describe his favourite notion of investment. Despite extensive mecha- Germany's 40 per cent. On his return from using the tides by running pipes under the sea to a distance of 1,000 feet around 1,570 c::: miles of coastline from Berwick-on-Tweed 0 to the Solway Firth. With a 6-foot tidal ;;;... fluctuation he reckoned this vast con e struction would supply only one million 200,000 c::: tons of coal equivalent - one fifth of (X 106) c;;.,0 London's annual consumption or enough to keep ten Great Easterns constantly ~0 under steam. E 1.) 150,000 By the summer of 1866, Jevons had (/) become a newspaper celebrity. Gladstone w i wrote to him, J.S. Mill quoted him and >a: Queen Victoria appointed a Royal Com w mission on coal chaired by the Duke of (/) w Argyll. In its report five years later, this a: 100,000 commission estimated the amount of coal .....J which "may reasonably be expected to be
© 1982 Nature Publishing Group Nature Vol. 296 29 April 1982 799 the conference Leslie Grainger, the were known to exist and had "aspects of cent. This fall, due to both economic National Coal Board's Member for usability within a practical limit of time and factors and to mechanization, could in Science, pointed out the absurdity of these within a specified set of economic and Clarke's opinion be reversed under high oil data to the board. technologic conditions", resources prices and a vigorous programme of coal A hint of what had happened can be comprised "all materials in the ground, exploration. Over the next decade K. found in the World Energy Conference discovered or undiscovered, usable at Moses thought the figure for economically Survey for reference year 1975. Although present or not, ... considered within the recoverable reserves might well rise to 50 or total reserves were now nearly 101 x 109 context of all factors . . . that may even 60 x 1()9 tonnes. Clarke suggested the tonnes, economically recoverable reserves influence its conversion into a 'reserve', possibility of returning to the older were still only 3.887 x 109 tonnes. From a and . . . that enter into prediction or recovery percentages which would push the footnote we Jearn that this figure con opinion as to possible future usability''. figure up to 90 x 1()9 tonnes. Before the oil cerned reserves at existing collieries and This distinction was recognized in Blonde! price rise of 1973, George Armstrong, then opencast sites (what are usually described and Lasky's 1956 equation: chief geologist to the National Coal Board as "operating reserves"). A second Resources = Reserves assessed the current recovery of reserves at footnote tells us that the National Coal + Marginal resources about 25 per cent, but he clearly Board's "alternative" estimate for econo + Submarginal resources anticipated a major change in the industry mically recoverable reserves (not restricted + Latent resources given increased investment. With capital, to those with access from existing mines It has become increasingly recognized he explained, "access could be made to the and by local marginal costs) was 45 x 1Q9 internationally, and has influenced the best seams in the vast extentions of our tonnes. World Energy Conference classification existing coalfields", and we should see whose 1974 Survey definitions were: "for the first time since the latter part of Resource terminology e Total resources: "The total quantities the nineteenth century ... an increase in Was this confusion merely a product of the available in the earth that may be the reserves of coal in Britain which can be semantics of resource estimates or of some successfully exploited and used by man considered as economically workable''. He deeper issues? Clearly there is still not a within the foreseeable future." never denied the 200 x 1()9 tonnes total UK consensus over the former if only because e Total known reserves-in-place: "The resources but considered this figure of different resources tend to be suited to corresponding fraction of resources that "only academic interest" and "grossly different terminological rules and the have been carefully measured and assessed erroneous as an estimate of economically needs of the smaller commercial mining as being exploitable in a particular nation workable reserves". It was right that under companies are not the same as those of a or region under present local economic stricter rules of resource estimation the old nationalized industry. The roots of a conditions using available technology.'' UK figures, like the early American ones, precise terminology can be seen in Herbert e Recoverable reserves: "That fraction should have been reduced. It was not that Hoover's little classic, The Principles of of reserves-in-place that can be recovered some of this coal had never existed, or had Mining ( 1909), where the tripartite division under the above economic and technical vanished since 1900, but that the onus was of mineral ores into proved, probable and limits." put on the coal industry and the nation to prospective was recommended. Four years e Additional resources: "All other support the exploratory research and later the staff of the Canadian Geological classifications with a lower degree of technical development needed to bring Survey, in their task of assessing world coal geologic certainty as to their existence than more and more of the resources into the resources for the twelfth International those indicated as known." reserves, and thus afford a clearer picture Geological Congress, asked for returns to Of this last category the 1980 Survey of the future potential of our coalfields. be classified into two groups (above and remarked that they: Nevertheless, it should be stated that below 4,000 foot depth) and these to be embrace all resources, in addition to proved there is not yet a consensus between subdivided into actual, probable and reserves, that are of at least foreseeable geologists within and without the coal possible. These terms, or their equivalents, economic interest. The estimates provided industry as to how much of the coal in the were used by mining engineers and mining for additional resources reflect, if not UK's abandoned fields remain accessible geologists in the preparation of expert certainty about the existence of the entire for future extraction. advise on the likely profitability of mining quantities reported, at least a reasonable ventures. They expressed the level of level of confidence. Resources whose Towards atomic power confidence to be placed on the extent and existence is entirely speculative are not The recognition of the industrial advantage included. availability of the resources in the mine, to be reaped by the nation which leads the and were intended to protect the investor What, then, is the meaning to be attached world in the exploitation of a new source of from exposure to fraudulent claims made to the United Kingdom's 1977 figures of(in power lay behind the public and on behalf of unsound commercial tonnes): governmental enthusiasm for exploiting ventures. Therefore they referred to Total reserves 100 X 1()9 the atom. Radioactivity was considered as existing technical and economic Economically recoverable 45 a possible novel source of power long ago conditions. reserves in the Times Literary Supplement for 17 During the Second World War the Additional resources 45 July 1903. Radium was considered United States government, concerned Total resources 190 amongst those "gigantic possibilities, about their mineral resources, held Senate The National Coal Board maintains that which are not probabilities at all yet ... ''. hearings on the subject at which the Bureau within 1.2 km depth and in seams over 60 Frederick Soddy, who had "ghosted" the of Mines and the Geological Survey em thick there are about 190 x 1()9 tonnes article, pictured how much energy radium (USBM/USGS) proposed a new tripartite of coal, of which some 100 x 1()9 tonnes would yield if its rate of disintegration definition of reserves as measured, are well ascertained but no figure has been could be speeded up. Rutherford, the indicated, and inferred, each division given for the confidence level. These article reported, "has calculated from his representing defined levels of reliability, estimates are in line with the general trend own experiments and those of Curie that the highest being the ± 20 per cent of of the Royal Commissions of 1871 and the energy stored up in one gramme of measured reserves. The long-term needs of 1901. The figure of 45 x 1()9 tonnes for radium is sufficient to raise 500 tons a mile such national assessments led S.G. Lasky economically recoverable reserves shows high. An ounce would therefore suffice to in 1949 to make an important distinction the recognition of the fact that recovery of drive a 50 horsepower motor car at the rate between reserves and resources, two terms what is known to be in the ground has of 30 miles per hour round the world''. If it hitherto used interchangeably. Whereas fallen from the nineteenth-century level of could be achieved with radium if could be reserves (measured, indicated and inferred) between 70 and 80 per cent to about 50 per achieved with uranium and thorium. "Our
© 1982 Nature Publishing Group 800 Nature Vol. 296 29 April 1982 fathers busied themselves with speculating to one was therefore knowingly a for losses during recycling of the fuel in the what would become of us when the world's thousand-fold exaggeration. He also knew breeder, with the result that Thirring's supply of coal was exhausted. A single step what Fltigge did not know, namely that value for uranium reserves was 2,000Q. of science is needed for that problem to be only 1 in 139 (usually stated as 1 in 140) of ''The date of depletion of the energy answered in a manner beyond the dreams the atoms in uranium is readily fissionable capital of our Earth", he concluded in even of the scientific novelist." with slow neutrons, that is, those of the Energy for Man, "is therefore prolonged We all know that these prophetic words isotope 235 U. by at least a millenium . . . Thus the were fulfilled (for uranium not radium) As later experience showed, the consequence of Hahn's great discovery will when in 1939 Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch utilization of uranium by Britain's Magnox free us from the fear that our energy interpreted the experimental results of reactors is about0.5 per cent (of which 235 U resources will run out within quite a short nuclear fission; and Halban, Joliot and contributes about 0.35 per cent and the rest period of history." Kowarski, Fermi and others discussed the comes from the isotopes of plutonium and possibility that it might be accompanied by other elements). Taking a very high grade US coal resources a chain reaction. That year was not only the uranium ore with 1 Ofo uranium content, A more surprising aspect of Putnam's annus mirabilis of nuclear fission, it also one fifth of which is recovered in report was his reworking of the estimates of marked the first attempt to calculate the extraction, and comparing it with a second US coal resources. To the 1944 figure of potential electricity output of a power grade_1 bituminous coal (50% carbon) and 3,100 x 1Q9 tonnes (total resources) he station run from a "uranium boiler". S. some 30% of stone chips and dust our applied a series of correction factors which Fli.igge calculated in Die Naturwissen 'from the ground' ratio for Magnox reduced it by nine tenths. As Schurr and schajten that complete fission of one cubic reactors would be: Netschert have well said Putnam's metre of uranium oxide powder would resulting 3.1 Q's worth of recoverable US yield 7 x 1010 kWh of electricity, sufficient 3 X 106 X 1 X 100 ~ 86 1 100x200 5 35 - · coal reserves "is based on limiting criteria to replace the entire output of Germany's that have no consistent basis; some of them power stations running on middle-German Research carried out in the United States are wholly arbitrary and some of them have brown coal for 11 years. during the Second World War made no relation to coal actually in stock". Comparisons such as Fltigge's have been uranium look much more attractive than Nuclear scientists have to their credit made repeatedly since 1939 in order to give the 21,000:1 ratio suggested, for the that they have in the past cautioned against some conception of the contrast in the elements heavier than uranium, elements the acceptance of wildly enthusiastic claims concentration of energy in fissionable fuels 93 and 94 in the Periodic Table, were for nuclear power. Such euphoric remarks as compared with fossil fuels. Hitherto the discovered as products of neutron capture included the "pill-in-a-pail" suggestion largest yield from a nuclear transformation by the abundant isotope of uranium, 238 U. made in the US Congress in 1946. All you had been the 22.2 MeV from the By 1941, Glenn Seaborg and co-workers needed to heat your house for a year, conversion of lithium (6Li) into alpha had isolated element 94 and called it according to this idea, was a small pill of particles (4 He). But when M.C. Henderson plutonium, 239 Pu. As expected from uranium in a pail of water. Other calcu measured the energy yield from uranium in theoretical considerations it proved fissile lations suggested that a piece of uranium 1939 it was a staggering 17 5 meV together with 240 Pu and 241 Pu by both the size of an egg would propel the Queen (theoretical value, 198 MeV). (The beta thermal and fast neutrons. Mary from New York to Europe and back, decay of radioactive fission products sub Estimates of world uranium supplies whilst other pundits claimed that onP. the sequent to fission of 235 U is 21 MeV, and won a new significance in December 1951 size of a pea placed under the doorstep has to be subtracted from the 198 MeV.) when the US experimental breeder reactor would suffice to heat a house for its entire The table below illustrates the million-fold (EBR 1) yielded electricity to the grid and it lifetime. increase in yield per atom when we go from had been shown meanwhile that the At the end of the Second World War, combustion to fission. number of atoms of the abundant 238 U experience with the Hanford reactors had 239 Theoretical energy yields per atom converted to fissile Pu exceeded the shown that very little of the 0. 7 per cent 235 l2C Combusion 4.17 ev number of U atoms fissioned. That 235U in the fuel was 'burnt' before meant that more fuel was 'bred' than was 226Ra Fission 4.79 MeV 'poisoning' seriously reduced fission. This consumed. led Oppenheimer in 1947 to advise that it did mu Fission 198 MeV The principle of the breeder reactor When we compare uranium and carbon having been experimentally established, not appear hopeful to use natural uranium weight for weight the ratio is approx energy forecasters waxed confident about a directly as an adequate source of fuel for atomic power. The reactivity of systems imately 3 million to one. But H.D. Smyth world energy future based on uranium. based on natural uranium is low; even the in his report on the Manhattan project Palmer Cosslet Putnam in his report to the fraction of 235U which can be consumed considered what the fission/combustion US Atomic Energy Commission in 1953 without replenishing the fuel is small. ratio would be if by fission all the matter of included all low-grade sources of uranium Because of this the raw material the atom was converted into energy. The in his calculation of recoverable world requirements, if such reactors are to play an equation relating matter and energy (e = reserves at 25 million tonnes, with an important part in power economy, are mC2), he wrote, energy yield of 1,716Q, one third of which economically prohibitive. It is true that one could re-enrich this natural fuel, but the ... shows that one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of - 575Q - it would be economical to 'burn'. As he was contracted by the power expenditure involved in such isotope matter, if converted entirely into energy, separation by any present methods makes would give 25 billion Kwh of energy. This is commission to estimate the maximum this likewise prohibitive. equal to the energy that would be generated possible contribution which nuclear power by the total electric power industry in the could make, it is hardly surprising that this Although the General Advisory United States (as of 1939) running for estimate of uranium reserves was wildly Committee to the Atomic Energy approximately two months. Compare this exaggerated. Today figures in the range 6.6 Commission discussed drafts of fantastic figure with the 85 Kwh of heat to 14.5 million tons have been dismissed as Oppenheimer's memorandum, it was not energy which may be produced by burning misleadingly fanciful. Total world reserves published for fear of undermining an equal amount of coal. are still put at less than 2 million tons, plus congressional support for the commission. Smyth knew then, as we know now, that additional resources of little above 1.5 Oppenheimer's ground for pessimism over less than 0.1 per cent of the matter in million tons. When Hans Thirring natural uranium reactors has, as we know, uranium can be converted into energy by reworked Putnam's uranium estimates in proved exaggerated. Britain's Magnox fission (to be precise it is 0.091 per cent). 1958 he neglected or n·iected the one third reactors do 'burn up' some 0.5 per cent of His calculation showing a ratio of 3 x 109 utilization which Putnam made to allow the entire fuel since they fission about half
© 1982 Nature Publishing Group Nature Vol. 296 29 April 1982 801 the mu and some of the plutonium they context of these words was provided by the FoR an excellent critical discussion of produce. Nevertheless reactors of this type coal price rise of 40 per cent over eighteen resource nomenclature the reader is referred are no longer built, precisely because they months in 1969-70 and the picketing of to G. B. Fettweiss, World Coal Resources: use so little of the fuel. power stations by mineworkers in 1972. Methods of Assessment and Results (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1979). Also Considerable caution was also expressed More was to follow- the 140 per cent price invaluable are: The Royal Society's at the first nuclear power session of the rise of coal in 1975, the 400 per cent price submission to the Commission on Energy World Power Conference when the subject rise of oil in 1973-74 and the miners' strike and the Environment, Environmental was included in this organization's Fuel of 1974 which involved a four-month Aspects ofIncreased Coal Usage in the U.K. dispute in the industry. (February 1980) and the WATT Committee Economy Conference at The Hague in on Energy, Assessment of Energy 1947. Charles Thomas's calculation of the Resources, Committee Report 9 (1981) and cost of nuclear electricity (nuclear 0.8 cents Conclusion the report of the Commission on Energy and per Kwh, coal 0.65 cents) for the UN Statistics on fuel reserves do not constitute the Environment, Coal and the Environment (1982). The proceedings of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946 was cold hard facts, they are judgements about November 1981 British Nuclear Energy attacked by Con. Edison's research the probable outcome of a series of events Society conference on the fast reactor fiuel engineer, Ward F. Davidson and others. in space and time. One might even claim cycle should be published soon. There the Both Sir John Cockcroft and L. Kowarski tha they do not so much form government "reasonably assured resources" of uranium are given as 2.6 million tonnes. were cautious, the latter being decidedly policy as result from such policy. Since the caustic about the fast reactor. The tone was introduction of oil-fired power stations in added to the economically exploitable again cautious at the full session of the the 1950s the policy of building a multi-fuel reserves. There is a sense, then, in which, as World Power Conference in 1951. base. to electricity generation with nuclear Clarke has remarked, an investment Cockcroft said it was "like gazing into the base-load has been followed by both decision which significantly favours one crystal ball to ask us at this stage what political parties. Whereas governments energy industry at the expense of the operating and capital costs are going to have in the past given some protection to others, is likely to be self-fulfilling, and be". At the Atoms for Peace Conference coal against oil there has been from 1955 may thus prove to have been economically of 1955 he was looking to this "second onwards a consistent policy of favouring and financially correct. decade" (the 1970s) for the uranium/coal nuclear power, a policy shared by the The claimed potentials of both coal and ratio to be raised by the breeder principle to Central Electricity Generating Board spent uranium fuel reserves raise sensitive at least a million to one. whose aim it is to increase dependence issues - fears of increased seismic activity, It was in 1951 that work on the fast upon nuclear-generated electricity for base water table changes and water reactor had begun in the United Kingdom, load, and thus to diminish the impact of contamination, in the case of coal mining; stimulated by concern over uranium higher coal prices and the threat posed by concerns about reprocessing and long-term supplies. Eleven years later, the Dounreay the withdrawal of labour in the coal storage, and doubts about the commercial fast reactor (DFR) began generating elec industry. When the all-party Commons performance of the fast reactor, in the case tricity. This 60 MW(t) station was fueled Committee on Energy delivered its report of spent uranium fuel. If the Coal Board's with uranium, 75 per cent enriched 235 U, in February 1981, a Daily Telegraph editorial estimate of 45 x 109 tonnes looks like a not plutonium. It was run on full power for described the recommended "cut-back in "giant extrapolation" to quote a Nature five years before being treated as a test bed nuclear power station construction" as editorial, how much better are the claims for plutonium fuels. It has been succeeded "naive, petty-minded, and ill-informed". made on behalf of spent uranium fuel? by the prototype fast reactor (PFR) using The editorial continued: True it has not to be mined, but it will have mixed oxide fuel. By 1973 construction was to be reprocessed many times before even It is no doubt bad luck for its authors that the completed and the following year saw report appeared just as an indefinite national half its energy content has been liberated. operation at low power. coal strike was threatened. But we, on the This analysis of energy resource claims It is surely no accident that the potential other hand, should be thankful for the does not suggest intentional rivalry by the world role of nuclear energy was being timing. It enables us to see how absurd it Atomic Energy Authority and the National stressed in the United Kingdom from 1973 would be not to invest massively in nuclear Coal Board. Their presentation about the onwards based upon the promise of the fast power at a time when coal supplies are under same time was fortuitous. That they both reactor. Its high fuel utilization, claimed constant threat, and, more important still, represent responses at the political level in Sir John Hill in the magazine Atom, "will when the Russians are reaching out greedy the campaign for government support enable the vast reserves of very low-grade claws towards the Middle East oil wells. seems evident. Also clear from this analysis uranium to be utilized without significantly Clearly the formulation of energy policy is is the fact that the modern distinction increasing the overall cost of electricity". a highly political process. The decisions between resources and reserves, though World reserves of coal, he admitted, were reached can affect the estimates of reserves dating from 1949, is still in the process of enormous, but "we are consuming the most themselves. Investment in machinery, pro winning general acceptance. Reluctance to accessible and most convenient fuels (gas specting, methods of combustion and of adopt it might well be due not only to and oil) fastest and we are depleting most fission, all influence what proportion of tradition but also to the tendency which rapidly those reserves which are most the total resource may be considered as strict definitions of economic reserves have conveniently situated geographically, economically extractable reserves. Thus to belittle the long-term potential of an economically and politically". Coal, fluidized-bed-combustion can be achieved industry's resources. If decision-makers though abundant, was expensive to mine profitably with low grade coal of ash con have some appreciation of the factors and transport. Moreover the electricity tent up to 55 per cent instead of the maxi involved in the process of converting industry needed flexibility to cope with mum 30 per cent for conventional resources into reserves then the application shortages such as strikes and embargoes combustion, thus bringing high-ash coal of this fundamental distinction of nomen could create. Though improvements in UK deposits into the reserves. Similarly high clature will be more consistently adopted. coal production were impressive, the sulphur coals whose combustion causes I acknowledge the assistance of Mr A. industry remained in Sir John Hill's words acid rain can be burnt without liberation of Michael Clarke, Dr Leslie Grainger and "essentially a labour intensive industry sulphur dioxide in the fluidized bed. Professor E. H. Francis; Mr Keith Bowes despite increasing use of machinery and, if Uranium reserves, which at present are kindly commented on an earlier draft of the the men employed are to maintain a trivial by comparison with coal, are section of the paper given to nuclear standard of living compatible with the task increased in terms of their energy yield energy. The extract from Oppenheimer's they are being asked to undertake, the some sixty-fold with the fast reactor. This, memorandum to the AEC Advisory labour costs of the industry will rise and in turn, will allow lower-grade ores to be Committee is cited with the permission of this must be reflected in the cost". The brought from the resource category and the US Department of Energy. 0
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