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Wow. I suppose it should have been obvious, but it's still interesting to see nuclear's numbers so high, considering the enormous material requirements for reac
by 542458 11y ago
Wow. I suppose it should have been obvious, but it's still interesting to see nuclear's numbers so high, considering the enormous material requirements for reactors. Only makes me more sad that the world seems to be closing down nuclear rather than opening it up.
- brrt 11y agoA large problem with current generation nuclear is that the easily obtainable uranium isotopes are in the process of running out (in no small part due to artificial limitations on e.g. reprocessing of fuel). We'll probably continue to have enough for some time to come, but a large-scale switch to nuclear energy is actually quite unlikely at this stage. I don't mean to say that this is the primary reason for nuclear's demise - it isn't - but it is a real hurdle against increasing deployments. Of course, there are very exciting new developments in nuclear technology that solve this - breeding, reprocessing, etc - but they are all (still) at an experimental stage. That's the catch-22 of nuclear: there's an existing, mature industry, which uses it's fuel unsustainably, and there are developments to sustainably use nuclear power, which is quite far from being an industry.