This has driven the price of uranium from $7 to $41 per pound in a few years. Fortunately exploration is booming and new mines are coming online. Hopefully we will avoid a uranium shortage in the mid 2010:s. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Program Status: * 269 metric tons of bomb-grade HEU, recycled into * 7,868 metric tons of LEU power plant fuel, equivalent to * 10,748 nuclear warheads eliminated. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
*
269 metric tons of bomb-grade HEU, recycled into *
7,868 metric tons of LEU power plant fuel, equivalent to *
10,748 nuclear warheads eliminated.
The Russians are a fickle bunch.
Under a 1993 U.S.-Russian agreement, Russia will convert 500 metric tons of HEU from dismantled warheads to LEU by 2013. However, Russia will still be left with more than 550 metric tons of HEU. The United States, which possesses more than 740 metric tons of HEU, plans to convert or dispose of 174 metric tons that it has designated as "excess to its future military needs." But this process will not be completed until 2016 or later, after which the U.S. military will still retain some 570 metric tons of HEU.
Highly-enriched uranium from weapons stockpiles is displacing some 10,000 tonnes of U3O8 production from mines each year, and meets about 15% of world reactor requirements.
