On Uranium’s Abundance
(1) Written by Karl Grossman to The New York Times, May 14, 2006. (2) When the May 14 letter was not published by the Times, Prof. Grossman wrote to Byron Calame, the Times Public Editor, urging him to recommend a “correction” be printed relating to the editorial “The Greening of Nuclear Power.” (3) As explained by Mr. Calame in his letter to Mr. Grossman, after making an inquiry into the issues at hand he decided “not to press for a correction.”

Letter 1

To the Editor:
A central journalistic error of your editorial, “The Greening of Nuclear Power” (May 13), was the claim that nuclear “fuel—uranium” is “abundant.” In fact, a relatively rare and limited isotope of uranium—Uranium-235—is the fuel in nuclear plants.

Virtually all naturally occurring uranium (more than 99%) is Uranium-238, which does not fission or split and so can’t be used as nuclear fuel. “High-grade” uranium containing a useable percentage of Uranium-235 is seen as running out in decades—thus the long-time focus of the nuclear industry on using plutonium as nuclear plant fuel.

Plutonium, which is manmade, is extremely poisonous—a microscopic particle inhaled can cause lung cancer—and with it as a fuel an accident at a nuclear plant can result in an actual atomic explosion.

Further, the proliferation and terrorist threat would be even more immense as plutonium is the common fuel of atomic bombs.

—Karl Grossman
—Old Westbury, NY

EDITOR’S NOTE:
The writer is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, and an internationally recognized expert on nuclear issues.

Letter 2:
“The Greening of Nuclear Power” Mistake

Dear Mr. Calame,
As a long-time journalist as well as, for the past nearly 30 years, a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, I understand the latitude permitted in editorials.

However, I was prompted to write a letter to the editor to The New York Times—never published—about a recent editorial in the paper entitled “The Greening of Nuclear Power” (May 13).

A journalistic error was made in the editorial in the claim that nuclear “fuel—uranium” is “abundant”—presented as a reason justifying a renewed try at nuclear power technology.

A serious mistake of fact was made: uranium is abundant but the isotope of uranium used as a nuclear “fuel”—Uranium-235—is not.
Virtually all naturally occurring uranium, I noted, (indeed some 99.3 percent) is Uranium-238—which does not fission and so cannot be used as nuclear “fuel.”

Indeed, for this reason, I continued, there has been a long-time focus by the nuclear industry on using plutonium as a fuel in nuclear plants. And, I pointed out, plutonium is extremely poisonous and constitutes a heightened proliferation and terrorist threat.

Essentially the claim of nuclear “fuel—uranium” being abundant is like saying we should never have problems obtaining potable water because so much of the earth is covered by water. Yes, but that’s seawater which people cannot drink.

I appreciate, as I say, the latitude of editorials but this kind of basic error in a lead editorial that constituted an important position of The Times deserves a correction, which has never come.

—Yours truly,
—Karl Grossman

Letter 3:

Dear Mr. Grossman:

I have asked the editorial page for an explanation of the use of “abundant.”

First, I have to say that I think that “abundant” tends to reflect a good deal of opinion.

Second, below is a portion of what the editorial page offered in response to my query to them. It has led me to decide not to press for a correction.

The assertion that uranium is “abundant” was based primarily on an interdisciplinary study from MIT, entitled “The Future of Nuclear Power,” published in 2004, which argued that there are “adequate uranium resources available at reasonable cost” to support using a once-through fuel cycle for the next 50 years, under a global growth scenario for nuclear power, without resorting to reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium. (See page x of the executive summary). On page 34 of that report, in the section on availability of uranium resources, the experts judge that “the required resource base will be available at an affordable cost for a very long time.”

The U-235 vs U-238 issue is a red herring. The MIT experts are saying there is plenty of uranium (a mix of the rare isotope U-235 and the plentiful isotope U-238) from which one can make reactor fuel in which the U-235 component is enriched from its original state. In other words, there is plenty of U-235 available in natural uranium despite the writer's assertion that there is not.

So, too, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a foundation-supported bipartisan group with environmental and energy experts in charge, concluded in its December 2004 report that “Uranium to fuel an increased number of reactors is abundant and relatively inexpensive, both in the United States and worldwide. The uranium-supply situation is such that the availability and cost of this fuel are not likely to fall prey to cartels, embargoes, political instability, or terrorist acts.” (p. 57)