3 ms·

Pick a problem, you cant solve them all at once. - mining is pretty much a necessity of life at this point. - 200 years to come up with solutions to energy pr

Pick a problem, you cant solve them all at once. - mining is pretty much a necessity of life at this point. - 200 years to come up with solutions to energy production while not turning the planet into an oven sounds pretty good.

nostromo 11y ago
You've misunderstood my comment. We have 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption. But if we replaced all fossil fuels with nuclear, we'd consume 10 times more per year and we'd only have about 20 years of energy available before needing to move on to a new energy source.
- ps4fanboy 11y ago
  Uranium exploration is pretty much non existent these days, I would'nt be comfortable saying how much there actually is. Peak oil has been coming for decades but they keep finding it.
- flubert 11y ago
  Okay, it is wikipedia, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor "Adherents claim that with seawater uranium extraction, there would be enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy our energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy."
  - civilian 11y ago
    Yeah, breeder reactors are even mentioned in the sciam article that nostromo posted. He's cherry-picking his info.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    There are only four breeder reactors in operation, we'd need a lot more rather quickly for them to be useful. Also as with all things nuclear there are an awful lot of claims and not a lot of known things here. Nuclear somehow always looks much better in theory than it does in practice.
DasIch 11y ago
There aren't a lot of problems though, there is just one: We rely on fossil fuels. Switching to nuclear fission won't change that in the slightest. Also even if you could get sufficient agreement on the need for more nuclear power plants - which you won't - it would still take way to long to build enough of them to have an impact. It makes much more sense to invest in renewable energy, the energy grid and research into nuclear fusion.

nostromo 11y ago

You've misunderstood my comment. We have 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption. But if we replaced all fossil fuels with nuclear, we'd consume 10 times more per year and we'd only have about 20 years of energy available before needing to move on to a new energy source.

ps4fanboy 11y ago
Uranium exploration is pretty much non existent these days, I would'nt be comfortable saying how much there actually is. Peak oil has been coming for decades but they keep finding it.
flubert 11y ago
Okay, it is wikipedia, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor "Adherents claim that with seawater uranium extraction, there would be enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy our energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy."
- civilian 11y ago
  Yeah, breeder reactors are even mentioned in the sciam article that nostromo posted. He's cherry-picking his info.
- DasIch 11y ago
  There are only four breeder reactors in operation, we'd need a lot more rather quickly for them to be useful. Also as with all things nuclear there are an awful lot of claims and not a lot of known things here. Nuclear somehow always looks much better in theory than it does in practice.

DasIch 11y ago

There aren't a lot of problems though, there is just one: We rely on fossil fuels. Switching to nuclear fission won't change that in the slightest. Also even if you could get sufficient agreement on the need for more nuclear power plants - which you won't - it would still take way to long to build enough of them to have an impact. It makes much more sense to invest in renewable energy, the energy grid and research into nuclear fusion.