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February 12, 2009 at 10:25:18

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How much uranium yellowcake is in coal versus nuclear power?

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By John Toradze (about the author)     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

For OpEdNews: John Toradze - Writer

I happened on this article, then did the arithmetic on the implications.
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Sparton Resources announced that it had successfully produced a small quantity of yellowcake (U3O8) from fly ash from a Chinese coal-fired power plant.

The uranium extraction test work is being conducted by Sparton's processing engineering consulting firm Lyntek Inc of Denver, Colorado, USA. The test to produce yellowcake used 6.1 kg of mixed fly ash produced at the Xiaolongtang power plant. The ash averaged some 0.4 pounds of U308 per tonne of ash (160 parts per million uranium or 0.00016).
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The ratio of yellowcake to enriched uranium is about 11%-12% of the yellowcake that creates nuclear fuel for power plants. World production of coal ash is somewhere between 700 million and 1.5 billion tons per year, which is a world distribution of about 160,000 tons per year of raw yellowcake uranium upon the world. (Taking 1 billion tons as the nominal value for convenience).  10^9 x 1.6x10^-4  
One source has worldwide uranium production at 36,263 tons in 2004. Which means, that if all the uranium mined each year for power plants were dispersed as fine particles around the world in the air, it would be around 22% of what is distributed from coal fired power plants. Then, of course, there is radium and other materials from coal. Coal is, unfortunately, the default option that we are taking when we ask for electricity without burning oil or gas.

 

John Toradze is the pen name of a scientist who ran an office in Tbilisi, Georgia for 5 years and traveled widely in Russia the former USSR nations and nearby. I have authored chapters for books published by the West Point terrorism center on (more...)
 

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Book Recommendations for "Coal Ash Electricity"
The Impact Of Ash Deposition On Coal Fired Plants: Proceedings of the Engineering Foundation Conference Held at the St. John's Swallow Hotel, Solihull, England
by Jim Williamson

$369.95
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Number of pages: 787
Publisher: CRC

Biogeochemistry of Trace Elements in Coal and Coal Combustion

$299.00
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Number of pages: 358
Publisher: Springer

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Burning coal does not create fission byproducts by Bucky the Commoner on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 8:29:40 AM
The facts are straight. by John Toradze on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:00:50 AM
coal is a strawman argument by William Whitten on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 10:09:49 AM
No, it is not a strawman, it is very realistic by John Toradze on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:32:02 PM
Sloppy, biased argument against solar power. by Aaron Aarons on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:05:15 PM
An alternative to coal and nuclear - cars as power plants! by Mark Goldes on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:16:09 AM
Mark you are spamming with this message. by John Toradze on Friday, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:37:14 PM
the cheapest, huh? by io on Saturday, Feb 14, 2009 at 1:41:10 AM
The costs of nuclear power are legislative/political. by John Toradze on Saturday, Feb 14, 2009 at 4:12:57 PM
Toradze's uranium-in-fly-ash figures questionable by Aaron Aarons on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 at 4:52:25 PM
That's a good comment. by John Toradze on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:19:50 PM
I'm absolutely no defender of coal! by Aaron Aarons on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:28:29 PM
We also have to keep in mind by John Toradze on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:23:56 PM

 
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