Re: "Nuclear energy 'not the solution to global warming"

T. Keating wrote:

Actually, the rock of the oceanic crust has a much lower level of uranium than
the continental crust. Uranium (and, to some extent, thorium) preferentially
go into felsic rocks in preference to mafic rocks. The concentration
of uranium in the continental crust is enriched by orders of magnitude
over the average U content of the Earth because of this.


Assumes facts not supported by any evidence. (authoritative links??)

Feel free to look it up yourself; Google would work. The average U
content in the Earth is thought to be roughly that in carbonaceous
chondrite meteorites, which represent the composition of the (condensible)
part of the pre-solar medium. This chart gives those abundances:

http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/chondritic_abundances.html

Note that uranium occurs at about 8 ppb by mass, nearly three orders
of magnitude lower than the average concentration in the Earth's crust.
This is consistent with the observed geothermal heat flow, which is
ultimately derived from radioactive decay. If the entire Earth had
as large a concentration of U as the crust the heat flow would be
far higher (and the Earth probably uninhabitable).

See also: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979GeCoA..43..709F

You could find many more links of this kind with google. Uranium
concentrations have been measured extensively in the seafloor
around the world, since U is used extensively for radiochemical
dating.


Those numbers would dwarf the worlds current ore mining and refining
operations by at least fifty(50) fold .

By the time we're using 20ppm ore, breeding would probably be justified.
This would reduce the volume by a factor of about 200 (since you'd
be using the thorium as well as the 238U).

Fortunately, there's no need to build breeder reactors anytime soon,
and 20ppm ores won't be mined anytime soon.

Paul

.

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