RUNNING OUT OF URANIUM?

That is a question not as easily answered as the non-problems of nuclear wastes or the concocted threat to civil liberties. We have 30 years experience with transporting tons of plutonium across the country, and 2 billion years experience with what nuclear wastes do even if left to blind chance (Gabon), but nobody knows for sure how much more uranium ore is available. The fear that there might not be enough is not only voiced by power-hungry radicals, but also by serious scientists such as Prof. R. Kazmann of Louisiana State U., who believes there may be only enough for the lives (about 40 years) of reactors generating 45,000 MW, a capacity to be reached by the end of this year.

Dr Kazmann is not the type of Ehrlichian primitivist who thinks reserves are something you "run out of' when you suddenly reach the bottom of the barrel; a resource only gets harder to develop, until its price makes extraction uneconomical. Since potential resource estimating is largely guesswork, nobody can prove Dr Kazmann wrong; but by the same token, nobody can prove him right. Yet there are some indirect reasons for believing that he is mistaken.

First, nobody expects the forecasters to be absolutely correct; but historically, their errors have invariably been on the low side. In 1891 the US Geological Survey assured the country that there was little hope of oil in Texas; in 1914 the US Bureau of Mines estimated the US had 6 billion barrels of oil left (it now produces half that amount every year); and the story has remained the same all through this century. "America," says Prof. E.J. Mitchell of the National Energy Project, "has had less than a dozen years' supply of oil left for a hundred years." For the reasons why the error has always been on the low side, see his US Energy Policy ($3 from AEI, 1150 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036).

Second, uranium exploration and the increase in proved reserves are dependent on the profit incentive. Drilling activity peaked in 1957 when more than 9 million feet of drill holes were bored to meet military needs. Then the AEC stopped buying, the price plummeted to $6/lb, and the only holes around were the ones in Galbraith's economic theories. In the 60's the demand by the nuclear power industry brought back the drilling rigs; 30 million feet were bored in 1969. They did have to drill deeper and found poorer ore, but that is the normal evolution in developing a resource. In the 70's, the hounding and harassing of nuclear power started a vicious downward circle in exploration; we would guess that California's clobbering of the Luddites will bring back many a drilling rig, and if the performance is repeated in the November ballots proved uranium reserves will shoot up. Most present estimates of potential reserves are based on a fraction of the western US. As pointed out by energy economist M.F. Searl, there is a largely unevaluated potential in Alaska and the eastern US.

Thirds while Dr Kazmann's opinion is one to be respected, it is not shared by the energy industry as a whole, and they employ many geologists and economists who spend all their time sharpening estimates of potential uranium reserves. While government bureaucracies can, as a rule, be relied on to blunder their way into the deepest swamps, it is absurd that Gulf, Exxon or the electric utilities would push a technology that they knew to run out of fuel in a matter of years or even decades. They are all crooks, vampires and robber barons, goes the fashionable chorus, but are they morons, too?