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> Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. I responded to your claim previously[0]: > In that 200 years a whole lot m
by guscost 11y ago
> Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction.
I responded to your claim previously[0]:
> In that 200 years a whole lot more uranium will become available for economical extraction, exactly the same as what happened with oil and natural gas.
Do you have reason to believe this will not happen?
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10623187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10623187
- nostromo 11y agoI'm no expert here. I'm simply parroting what the scientists at the Nuclear Energy Agency have reported.
- guscost 11y agoOK, but remember that the experts said the same thing about oil and natural gas, and were wrong in that case. Here the estimate of ~10 megatonnes assumes that seawater extraction will never be economically viable, one possible source of error. If you're interested in the history of "peak resources" here is a good book about Paul Ehrlich's famous bet with Julian L. Simon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Bet-Ehrlich-Julian-Earth%C2%92s/dp/0300176481 http://www.amazon.com/The-Bet-Ehrlich-Julian-Earth%C2%92s/dp...
- wang_li 11y ago> Do you have reason to believe this will not happen? What's kind of amazing is that people don't believe that we will develop a solar powered technique to extract carbon the from the atmosphere and create liquid fuels.
- guscost 11y agoLike an artificial plant? If it is possible to engineer something that works better (and there is no reason to believe it is impossible) that would be a huge event.
- flubert 11y agoYou may be interest in: "A New Dawn for Industrial Photosynthesis" http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11120-011-9631-7.pdf http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11120-011-96...