The AAPG’s EMD’s Uranium (Nuclear & REE) Committee has just released an update to its annual report to the AAPG membership and to the general public. It will also be available one day on the AAPG website in Search & Discovery of their Data Pages publication in late 2021 (because of a Pandemic). In the meantime, the World Nuclear News has reported on the UCOM report (here).

Michael D. Campbell, I2M’s Chief Geologist and Chairman of UCOM said in a recent conference that serious competition is now underway to determine which energy source will dominate the power-grid of the foreseeable future. With coal declining rapidly, only natural gas, uranium (and nuclear power), hydroelectric power, and renewables (wind and solar) are in the running. Both natural gas and nuclear power are providing back-up to the power grid because of the inherent drawbacks of wind and solar, (where the former does not blow all the time and the latter is intermittent because there are cloudy days and the sun only shines during the day, of course). Because California has retired many of their nuclear power plants, natural gas has taken their place in the power grid in supporting California’s renewable energy systems and others around the U.S.

Inherent Failings of the Wind and Solar
Renewables’ inherent failings have been identified and this is made even more apparent by the need for back-up batteries during zero or low-power output, which are unusually expensive to buy and maintain. Furthermore, as recently constructed wind and solar projects mature, the cost of the electricity they are producing is going up rapidly, not only because of low energy conversion production efficiencies, but also because the costs of operation and maintenance of these projects have been overlooked and underestimated during the economic evaluations in the project design stages.

Campbell indicated that the Committee has concluded that nuclear power is a sustainable, reliable, climate- and business-friendly source of energy available at various scales to be fueled by current resources and new discoveries that will provide hundreds of years of available uranium supplies from a variety of secure sources.

For the rest of the UCOM report, see (here).