The
Overall Utility of DIR Exploration’s Uranium Exploration
Work
in
Northern Arizona
The current
set of
deep economic problems hitting the US and its people derive from the
yet unmet need to find substitutes for declining world oil
production. See the graph provided below that indicates the ‘peak
oil’ point in human worldwide production of oil arrived in 2005.
With
continued growth
in global human population, this means that in each succeeding year
after 2005, there will be less and less oil per capita to carry out
the work that has made the historically luxurious living standard
enjoyed by citizens of the industrialized/developed nations of the
West possible. Exacerbating this problem of natural resource
scarcity, fast-developing nations like Brazil, India, and China have
continued to accelerate their oil consumption dramatically over the
same period of time that world oil production has peaked, further
intensifying competition (demand) for the world’s annual production
of oil. See below.
Coinciding
increase in demand and decrease in supply of oil has necessarily
driven up local and world market price levels for petroleum-related
fuels like diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, propane, and natural gas.
Increasing price for these fuels that power the industrial economies
of the West has set up a ripple effect, elevating the prices for
food, goods, and all other household and industrial power sources.
Broadly increasing market prices are decreasing household and
business real incomes, thereby decreasing demand for all goods and
services. Decreasing demand for all goods and services is rapidly
increasing unemployment, setting up a relentless positive feedback
cycle that may very well soon lead to clearly recognizable recession
and ensuing economic depression [1].
Nuclear
Energy as a Source of Relief for
Permanent Petroleum Scarcity
Historically,
humans have encountered similar natural resource shortage problems
before, and were able to proactively circumvent them. In the early
stages of human expansion over the world, migration into less
inhabited, less depleted regions of the earth permitted roving groups
of people to avoid the negative effects of local natural resource
scarcity. Substitution of natural resources became a more common
strategy for overcoming scarcity than migration as permanent human
settlements gradually saturated the earth’s surface. Domesticated
animals and plants substituted for wild game and plants, coal
substituted for wood, kerosene derived from petroleum substituted for
whale oil – and now we have to find substitutes for petroleum.
At
this time, only three energy sources can technologically provide
energy day-in and day-out at a scale that will support the ‘standing
crop’ of humanity: Continental hydropower, fossil fuels, and
nuclear energy. The most important limiting factor preventing near
term utilization of wind and solar energy is the technical inability
to store sufficient amounts of these episodic, renewing energy
sources for use when the wind isn’t blowing and when the sun isn’t
shining. Significant expansion of continental hydropower is not
possible as nearly all water energy sources have been put into
harness, which leaves only – for the time being – the established
technologies of utilization of fossil and nuclear energy as
substitutes for the ever-declining availability of the readily
utilized fossil fuel of petroleum.
Gwenyth
Gravens’ Power to Save the World – the Truth about Nuclear
Energy [2] (2007, Knopf, New York) contrasts the positives and negatives
of
using coal or uranium to fill the emerging energy gap. Specific
excerpts from her text that answer the questions of why nuclear
energy is preferable to coal energy (much less surface impact, much
less process waste), and that address the cultural doubts about the
safety of nuclear energy can be read at:
http://www.cravenspowertosavetheworld.com/content/blogcategory/7/30/
Northern
Arizona Uranium-Mineralized Collapse
Breccia Pipes as a Fuel Source for An Expanded US Nuclear Energy
Program
According
to the United States Geological Survey, the collapse breccia pipes [3]
of northern Arizona are “…expected to be major source of future
uranium production within the United States [4] ”. This is because of the large total amount
of uranium ore present in
the region and the quality of this ore. This ore quality, especially
its richness and the compact nature of the breccia pipe ore bodies
permits production of uranium ore with little surface or subsurface
impact, and with relatively little expenditure of human and other
energy. As other pages on this website show, because these ore
bodies are dry – that is, they are present in the subsurface rocks
well above the regional water table – there is no contamination of
the regional aquifers due to mining, and no contamination of surface
water drainages. More than ten years of previous breccia pipe
exploration and mining in the region has resulted in no significant
surface impact or disturbance of the lands, waters, and biota present
there: This same degree of (non)impact is expected during the
current period of mineral exploration and mineral production.
Summary
The
above explains the basis for DIR Exploration’s involvement in
exploration for uranium collapse breccia pipes in northern Arizona:
-
There is a near- and long-term need for
energy substitutes for the dwindling supplies of petroleum.
-
Nuclear energy is a preferable energy
substitute over coal because of its far smaller disturbance of the
earth’s surface and subsurface, and because of its far smaller output
of waste products.
-
Nuclear energy is currently more practicable
than wind and solar power because it provides energy output day and
night, and throughout the seasons.
-
Uranium production from northern Arizona
collapse breccia pipes requires minimal energy inputs, results in
minimal disturbance to the surface and subsurface, and creates no
contamination or other disturbance to the regional aquifers and surface
water drainages.
Footnotes:
