Oh, in case you missed the spectacle, I am partially long CCJ and UEC (5% each, not a full position in my eyes), since uranium is awesome. My cash position stands at 10%.
The reasoning goes something like this: you people are over reacting, so I’ll be buying up the energy source which runs much of your grids, cheap.
Most people jumped into alternative energy, coal, and natural gas, on the assumption that this was the end of nuclear prospects. However, you do not build a coal firing plant or natural gas plant any faster than you build a nuclear reactor. And alternative energy has its own limitations when it comes to implementing. So for the meantime, there’s really no room to deviate from using nuclear fuel.
As to the health prospects of the Japanese unfortunate enough to be around the reactors, we still don’t know what’s being flung into the air. I slaughtered the description of particles yesterday, confusing them, but then I was going from the top of my memory. Allow me to correct those errors here.
Alpha emitters, like uranium, have an incredibly short Linear Energy Transfer. This makes them both incredibly safe to be around, and incredibly dangerous to ingest. On their own, touching them will not generally harm you as the energy being given off will not penetrate the depth of your skin. If they get inside of you, however, a very large amount of energy can be delivered directly to your most vulnerable organs, causing great damage. Incidentally, their interaction distribution is also finite in length (I thought it was the gamma ray) which means that with 100% certainty, there exists a length after which no radiation will be left to interact (called a Bragg curve).
So, if uranium is presently being thrown inland to where the Japanese grow their food, or if any people are unlucky enough to breathe too much in, they’re pretty fucked.
However, we don’t even know that it is uranium fuel (as in uranium 235 or 234) that is being emitted. Consider:
1. Spent uranium (like that in the storage pool) has oxidized and contains much lower levels of uranium 234 and 235. Oxidized uranium is apparently more stable and not as easily absorbed by the body, (only .5% of oxides will be absorbed, as they are not water soluble). Uranium passes quickly through the digestive track, exiting the body in short time.
2. In general, oxidized uranium is safer than regular uranium. If the amount being kick up in the reactor is sufficiently small, then the extreme heat combined with oxygen may neutralize much of the danger in short time.
3. Readings of radiation levels have been well within acceptable Equivalent Dosage limits.
4. Readings may be from Beta particles or Gamma rays, which do not have the long term consequences of Alpha emitters, when released into the environment.
Combine that with the consequences from Chernobyl (way over estimated), the lack of quickly implemented substitutes (Europe doesn’t have a lot of choices at this moment), and the fact that almost half of all Americans surveyed have expressed support for nuclear power, and you’re looking at a good buying opportunity.
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Well played, Mr. Cain.
Thanks Chess, you too. I noticed you’re in a good buying position.
Enjoy the weekend.
Spent fuel rods contain radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium as well – all of which, though relatively short lived, are harmful to biological systems. The kicker is that one of the reactors uses an oxide mix of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide.
Check out the report at nautilus.org. A lot of interesting info that I haven’t seen in the press.
Good point, I mainly stuck to the core element when I was thinking things over. I didn’t really look at any of the byproducts.
No, sorry, but after looking over the byproducts, I’m still not that worried about a long term effect on nuclear power. Most of that shit is only dangerous for a short period of time, like the iodine. I guess the iodine is what causes thyroid cancer in high dosages (very high survival rate, though).
Strontium 90 is worrisome, since it has a half life of about 30 years and it can get dragged right into the bone as it is substitued for calcium by the body. Even though it’s a Beta emitter, if enough of it is in the bone, it will do a lot of damage. But the big issue here is dosage, and no reports of extreme dosage concentrations have been reported.
Unless you have one of the long lived (million or billion year) Alpha emitters that crops up in large amounts, I’m just not seeing this having long term ramifications against the nuclear industry.
HI,
What about our friend URA? I like it a lot.
S
Sure, that’ll be less risky and a more general play on the state of nuclear energy around the globe. Looks like if the fears of nuclear energy subside and everyone stays the course, then a complete recovery will net you about 33% returns, provided the broader economy holds up.
Actually, URA looks a better move than CCJ, since the differences between drop off point and where they are now are about the same, but URA is a diverse collection. Less risk of negative company specific events. Wish I’d thought of that.
But I’m going big on speculation here with UEC, since if this blows over then 100% returns aren’t out of the question.
Thanks for the analysis. Appreciate it.
Reports this morning that high levels of radiation showing up in food (milk and spinach they mentioned). While report said it would take consuming lots of this for a long time to cause damage, I wouldn’t be feeding it to my daughter. Even small fears can cause larger panic.
It said that the equivalent dosage in the milk was about the equivalent of one CT scan over an entire year, and that the equivalent dosage in the spinach was about one half of that.
They’re mostly just monitoring the situation right now, and again, we don’t know what is causing the radiation. How long will it be around for?
Spent fuel is danergous not for the uranium but the products of fission Cs, Rb, etc. and nuetron capture, Pu.
Half lifes run from seconds to thousands of years. The big problem is the spent fuel pool not the reactor. They are open to the atmomstphere unlike the fuel in the reactor. I won’t hazard a guess on the future but burial seems likely now that the spent fuel integrity has been violated.
I think that’s a good call, especially since our own reactors have storage ponds that are filling up. Maybe there will be extreme pressure on Nevada to shut up and step aside, in the near future.
The Cesium doesn’t concern me (short lived, which means within our lifetimes it’ll clean itself up). And Rubidium is a naturally abundant Beta emitter (again, not as dangerous as Alpha emitters, so you can ingest more of them without the same level of effect as ingesting an Alpha); most people don’t realize that the number one source of radiation is from the earth itself. Off the top of my head, radiation from terrestrial sources (minerals and gases) in the ground (including Rubidium, Radium and Radon) account for something like 50-60% of all radiation received over the natural course of life. Radon gas by itself makes up more than 90% of all of that.
So the big question is, what’s up with the Alpha emitters, like uranium and plutonium. Plutonium is a 3% byproduct of the nuclear reactor process. So how much has been released and where did it go? In the end, the game is about Absorbed Dosage and Equivalent Dosage. Those are the numbers to peg.
You have a lot of your facts confused.
Short half life is not good, it means higher activity and dose.
I meant they will bury the japanese site, not recover it.
Alpha emitters are mostly an issue wihen consumed but they are also a surface contamination issue. That they don’t penetrate the dead epidermis is a misnomer. True they are stopped but in the process they give up their energy in producing low energy betas that damage living tissue in the body.
There is a good PDF available on the zero hedge site that has the best summury I have seen in the lay press.
He shows why japan is worse than Three mile island but not nearly as bad as chernobyl. I think he is being politically correct because japan is much worse than TMI. Still I agree this is local issue unlike Chernobyl.
Rationally the industry will not be penalize for long. We don’t build crap like the Mark I BWR with its brilliant spent rod placement anymore. Of course reactions to meltdowns are rarely rational.
Hope that helps
Half life has nothing to do with dosage.
Consider Technetium-99m; six hour half life but doctors wouldn’t hesitate to pump it into your veins. That’s half the idea behind nuclear medicine.
Dosage is more a difference between an unstable isotope and a stable core element, as a product of inner molecular forces. Smaller atoms will decay faster, but not necessarily deliver more dosage. You’ll get way more dose from some big ass atom dropping high LET particles, even if its half life is significantly longer.
Also, alpha particles do not necessarily give off beta particles once they slow down. That is one outcome, but how likely it is, I don’t know. More likely the helium ion just picks up some electrons and goes stable.
Respectfully, you are terribly confused.
My comment was an attempt to educate not debate. I won’t make that mistake again.
Good luck.
Similarly, I was not debating.
The definition of half life is the time it takes for half of the isotope to undergo nuclear decay (or better, the probability that an atom undergoes nuclear decay). It is a probabilistic measurement, who’s only variable is time.
Absolutely nothing to do with energy, or dosage.
Incidentally, was this the article you were talking about?
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/plecture/bmonreal11/pdf/BMonreal11_PublicLecture_KITP.pdf
Because I’m not seeing this guy saying anything drastically different from what I have. This is a short term problem that will clean up relatively quickly, but keep on eye on where the big dick alpha emitters are. He also minimalizes the risk from alpha emitters, by saying Pu 241 has a half life of 9 years. Well, maybe, but the alpha emitters it decays into can last for centuries.
Also, according to him, alpha emitters are about 300x more damaging than other radiation. Hence, absorbed dosage is misleading. Equivalent dosage is more relevant.