Generally, a treasure can be a collection of precious metals the value of which is based on scarcity, extraction difficulty, chemical properties such as nobility, and industrial uses. There are a few metals and elements that do not fit into any of the categories listed above. These metals fall within the domain of critical materials used to generate energy.  

Coal vs. Uranium: Comparing the Energy Value of Natural Resources

A widely known energy source is coal, not a metal but an element, which can be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. The spot price of coal is currently about $150 per metric ton. When coal power plants are located near coal mining sites, transportation costs are negligible, and, considering long-term coal purchasing contracts, the cost per ton of coal can be as low as $15. 

The electricity produced from 1 metric ton of coal in a coal power plant is about 2,000 kWh, which powers an average US household for 2.5 months. The electricity value at 10 cents per kWh associated with that amount of coal is $200, which is almost 13 times the low-end coal price for electricity production. You don’t need to do anything to coal other than burn it to increase its value. 

Why Uranium Is the Most Energy-Dense Fuel on Earth

Another element used for electricity production is uranium. Uranium is used in nuclear power plants as a heat source, like coal, to generate steam for electricity. One metric ton of uranium – the pure metal would fit into two banker’s boxes – contains enough energy to produce 10 billion kWh of electricity, about 5 million times as much as coal. At 10 cents per kWh, that one ton of uranium produces about $1 billion worth of electricity. 

This is equivalent to the annual electricity output of about 600 wind turbines, each 500 to 600 feet tall and rated at 5 megawatts, or enough electricity to power one million homes for an entire year. This incredible amount of energy stored in uranium gives the metal a value of $28,350 per ounce at electricity prices of 10 cents per kWh. 

The Nuclear Waste Myth: How 97% of Uranium’s Energy Is Left Unused

While clever engineers worked on nuclear power plant designs since the 1950s to extract as close to 100% of the energy from uranium, the United States government decided that extracting only 3% of the energy stored in uranium was good enough. Nuclear power plants were then built to do exactly that. Instead of producing 5 million times as much energy as coal, the number was reduced to “only” 150,000 times. A current gigawatt-class reactor requires over 60 tons of uranium, and it is refueled every 18 to 24 months. This design is used by the entire fleet of 94 existing US nuclear reactors. While wasteful – it leaves 97% of the uranium’s energy and some byproducts unused – this approach still produces the safest, cleanest, cheapest, and most reliable electricity humanity could ever wish for.  

But it also created a problem that has remained unresolved for over 40 years since the decision (NWPA 1982) was made to address it. The uranium fuel, barely used and containing 4% byproducts, is now called “nuclear waste.” Applied to anything else, this logic is absurd. If you eat only 4% of an apple, you will not even eat half the peel, let alone the flesh. 

The nuclear processes in the reactor produce about 1% of elements heavier than uranium, the transuranics, which are long-lived radioactive elements that remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The remaining 3% are fission products, which are highly radioactive. However, the fission products lose their radioactivity much faster than the transuranics and reach the level of natural background radiation after about 300 years. While 96% of the original uranium remains untouched, we are left with 1% transuranics that can still be used for nuclear fission and 3% nuclear fission products. 

Understanding Spent Nuclear Fuel and Long-Term Storage Challenges

After a cool-down period of 5 to 10 years, the fuel assemblies are placed in massive dry-cast concrete containers and are currently stored on the power plant sites. While during the first 100 years the fission products produce most of the excess heat and radiation, the transuranics become the dominant sources of radiation and heat in that slightly used nuclear fuel, and this remains the case for tens of thousands of years. That 1% of transuranics in the uranium batch is what causes long-term storage problems. 

There are different approaches to addressing the long-term storage issue. While France developed a process to extract a few more percentage points from spent nuclear fuel, this so-called reprocessing “à la française” produces even more waste than it starts out with and cannot be considered a viable solution. The US uses a once-through fuel approach, even though only 3% of the uranium is converted into energy, and 1% is converted into transuranics that can also fission and produce energy.  

Yucca Mountain and the Cost of America’s Nuclear Waste Policy

The US government lost a lawsuit filed by the nuclear industry, which was seeking a long-term solution for nuclear waste. Meanwhile, government officials chose an extremely costly and somewhat absurd method to handle this lightly used nuclear fuel: they decided to dig a hole, dump the fuel into it, and spend about half a trillion dollars on this project. 

Nevada’s Opportunity to Become a Nuclear Energy Innovation Hub

While you might guess which state in the union was chosen to host the most expensive hole ever created in human history, this has not yet happened. But there is another solution: a free market-driven approach worth $100 trillion, large enough to eliminate the national debt twice over.  The Silver State can be the home of this nuclear energy innovation hub and lead the country, but it will require a policy change.  

Interesting Fact: A coal plant wastes more potential energy in its ashes than it produces by burning coal. When a utility burns Wyoming coal to generate electricity and then dumps the residual ash into waste ponds, it also discards the tiny amounts of uranium naturally found in coal deposits. The uranium in the ashes contains the energy equivalent of 15 times that of the coal itself. As mentioned before, one ton of coal can provide 2.5 months of electricity to an average US household, and the uranium in the coal ashes, if used, could add another three years of electricity to that same household. 

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