I would be intersted in the web page you are referring to.
I made a submission on the ODX focussing on the greenhouse assessment, basically because BHPB had made a point in the EIS about covering life cycle emissions of their products and services including scope 3 emissions, yet I found that there was missing data and many exclusions that were not even acknowledged.

BHPB claimed a scope 3 benefit of the uranium saving more emissions than Australia produces (no details on whether this was based on life cycle data), and in making such a claim it is only fair and reasonable that their expansion greenhouse numbers also cover the direct and indirect construction, operating, and closure emissions of the mine and associated infrastructure for roads, rail, water desal, water pumping, power plant, power transmission, ports, the airport and the town.

I did not believe that this was completed and what was done was virtually impossible to disaggregate and check.

Regardless of any support that I may or may not have for any development whether it be a wind farm or a mixed ores mine, a complete data set is required for decisions and comparisons to be made.

You’ll often see anti-nuclear activists bring up Olympic Dam as an example of energy input and resultant life-cycle carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear power. Of course, they cherry-pick Olympic Dam because it certainly isn’t a typical uranium mine.

Since Olympic Dam is basically a large copper mine (and integrated copper smelter, which uses a significant amount of energy) which also produces a little bit of uranium and gold on the side, the energy inputs for Olympic Dam, per tonne of uranium oxide produced, are far higher than any other uranium mine anywhere in the world.

The energy inputs to typical uranium-only mines – Beverley, Ranger, or the overseas mines, take your pick – are tiny by comparison.

Despite this, however, the total energy input to Olympic Dam, including all the energy input for the smelting of the huge amount of Cu produced, is only a tiny fraction of the clean energy output from the mine in the form of uranium – even if we assume that that uranium is used inefficiently in LWRs. If the uranium is used efficiently in fast reactors, the EROEI for Olympic Dam – or any uranium mine – is far, far greater than it is already.

Incidentally, some anti-nuclear activists propose that we should stop uranium mining at Olympic Dam, but keep mining copper – I seem to recall that Jim Green mentioned this briefly on that radio interview that Brook and Green did recently. Of course, that’s completely impractical since the different elements are homogeneously mixed together in the Olympic Dam ore – you can’t mine one without mining the other. Even if you processed the copper but didn’t refine the uranium, you’d still be left with a pile of crude uranium oxide, so you might as well purify and sell this valuable resource.

There used to be a good webpage from BHP Billiton where they listed all the details of CO2 emissions, energy inputs, and other quantitative environmental data for Olympic Dam which can be used to quantitatively show just how big the EROEI factor is, but I cannot find it now.

I’ve seen a different estimate of 1 million litres of diesal per day.

Hopefully this can be clarified by BHPs disclousure.

However that cite didn’t address the energy cliff. They quote a favoured LCA of nuclear power showing a payback time of 10 months to 2.4 year that is 6 times more favourable to nuclear than the UTS study that you recommend (5.6 yrs to 14.1 years). Who’s debunking the debunkers? I think this needs further investigation.

BHP first estimated 450MW electical demand, then they estimated the need for 700MW electrical demand (will this be the last rise). Add to this the diesel to truck out 1 million tonnes a day for four years of over burden (each tonne requiring more energy than the last.) Than you can start trucking out the ore and begin count production output (each tonne continuing to require more energy than the last).

What will this average in GWattyears? Maybe Storm van Leuwen were closer to the mark than given credit for?

Depth is a critical dimenision in termining energy payback (it is potential energy), and the Roxby expansion includes a proposal for a very deep hole.

It also appears your calc does not include the cost (including CO2 cost) of removing the overburden.

So the figures produce an significant underestimate.

A truly national grid with nuclear and other desert coast inputs far away from the leafy suburbs has got to have some good points. Kev should go for wireless and satellite rather than fibre optic and save most of the $45bn for a low carbon grid.

Just look at the uptake of high speed(3minute) broadband. ( I am on 12kb/sec unwired only good for reading text and still photographs)

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/01/van-leeuwen-and-smiths-egregious.html

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/TheBenefitsOfNuclearPower

To cite the second link (scroll down to the “Energy Lifecycle of Nuclear Power” section):
“It is worth noting that the widely quoted paper by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith (SLS), which gives a rather pessimistic assessment of the Energy Lifecycle of Nuclear Power, assumes a far larger energy cost to construct and decommission a Nuclear Power plant (240 Peta-Joules versus 8 Peta-Joules(PJ)). The difference is that Vattenfall actually measured their energy inputs whereas Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Smith employed various theoretical relationships between dollar costs and energy consumed. This paper also grossly over-estimates the energy cost of mining low-grade Ores and also that the efficiency of extraction of Uranium from reserves would fall dramatically at ore concentrations below 0.05%. Employing their calculations predicts that the energy cost of extracting the Olympic Dam mine’s yearly production of 4600 tonnes of Uranium would require energy equivalent to almost 2 one-GigaWatt power plants running for a full year (2 GigaWat-years). You can follow this calculation here (http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/SLSPredictOD). This is larger than the entire electricity production of South Australia and an order of magnitude more than the measured energy inputs.”

Once the full nuclear life-cycle emissions for LWR are accounted for (includes: mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction and operation, decommissioning and storage of spent fuel), the greenhouse gas intensity of the power generated is 60 kg CO2-e per MWhe (BHLD, pg 172), which is 60 tonnes per GWh [for fast spectrum reactors like the IFR, it would be substantially lower, since we skip the mining, milling and storage steps]. Thus in 2005 the emissions equivalent for Olympic Dam uranium mining was ~11.5 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2-e. The expanded mine will be 48 Mt — that is, an additional 36.5 Mt of CO2-e will be released into the atmosphere each year as a result of the Olympic Dam expansion.

and

By comparison, the expanded Olympic Dam, with its anticipated output of 19,000 tonnes of U, would yield about 94 GWe of average power supply, or 794,000 GWh/yr.

794,000 GWh x 60t CO2/GWh = 47.64 Mt of CO2

Specs would be
1) one or two Gen 3 reactors in the Ceduna area next to a desal
2) water pipeline and AC transmission to Roxby Downs
3) a national East-West multi gigawatt HVDC line.

It would work out cheaper than Rudd’s fibre optic to every home proposal.

The variables that increas your payback period include factors such as ore concentration, ore hardness and ore depth.

Depth is a critical dimenision in termining energy payback (it is potential energy), and the Roxby expansion includes a proposal for a very deep hole. The economics of the proposal change if we were to remove the diesal subsidee given to BHP to truck the overburden and ore out of the hole.

have you calcluated the cost (including CO2 cost) of the overburden portion?

Have you decerned the hardness of the ore?

Barry, where did this figure come from?

Although as someone pointed out elsewhere, there would be a particularly satisfying message in having the next coal-fired power station in the La Trobe Valley replaced by a NPP. You could tell the people of Yallorn — time for some clean air with >100 times less radiation!