Niger authorities said Wednesday they have signed a new agreement with the Madaouela Mining Company, which is 60% owned by the Australian Atomic Eagle group, to relaunch a uranium mining project in the north of the country.
Niger authorities said Wednesday they have signed a new agreement with the Madaouela Mining Company, which is 60% owned by the Australian Atomic Eagle group, to relaunch a uranium mining project in the north of the country.
Probably an economic stillbirth.
Even if Niger weren’t as unstable as it unfortunately is right now, nuclear power is still by far the most expensive conventional way to generate electricity… Here in Germany, the conservatives are once again floating plans to revive nuclear power “just for the heck of it.” But hardly any investors want to get involved because it simply isn’t profitable without massive government subsidies (for which there’s no money), and renewables will have pushed nuclear power out of the grid in 30 years anyway (if the first plants are even built by then).
I can hardly imagine that things would be any different on a continent as sunny as Australia.
Wind is our backbone here in Aus, PV efficiency falls off a cliff over 40c. Ideally we’d build solar collector towers out in the middle of nowhere, but that seems to be a pipe dream.
Edit: This is for grid-scale, PV is everywhere for residential/small business solar feed-in.
Oh, that’s right. I hadn’t even thought about the efficiency losses caused by the heat effect! Thanks for pointing that out.