N-power uranium is not in short supply

IN his letter (September 22), Dr Philip Michael was selective in quoting from the joint report of the OECD and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to criticise statements made by Dr Philip Walton at the recent peak oil and gas conference in Cork.

The OECD report states that the 4.7m tonnes of uranium available are sufficient to fuel the present fleet of reactors for 85 years. It also says that “based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates”, more than 35 million tonnes are available for exploitation. This was omitted by Dr Michael.

The report adds that “advances in nuclear technology will allow a substantially better utilisation of the uranium resources. Reactor designs are being developed ... that are capable of extracting more than 30 times the energy from uranium than today’s reactors”.