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It doesn't matter anyway, nuclear power isn't a solution. At best it's a bandaid. First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those invol

It doesn't matter anyway, nuclear power isn't a solution. At best it's a bandaid. First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Second, it takes about 10 metric tons of raw uranium to make enough low enriched uranium to generate 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. If you take known reserves, and estimated undiscovered reserves, we only have 200ish years worth at current energy demands. Energy demands increase over time, for example we are generating 4x the energy we were in the early 1970s and more and more people are being able to afford electronic devices, if you go adding electric vehicles in worthwhile numbers you'll see a rapid spike as well so if we switched the entire world over to uranium based power, we might have 50 years worth. Even if you then use the waste from those reactors, via a different process like YC funded Oklo Inc is attempting to do using nuclear waste as an energy source, you still might only buy the world a century of clean nuclear energy.

jschwartzi 8y ago
The amount of fuel that you're quoting assumes that we don't ever reprocess the spent fuel. While the US doesn't do this due to proliferation concerns, it's possible to dramatically increase the longevity of nuclear power by doing so. This is likely what Oklo is doing. All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.
biglenny 8y ago
>First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.

jschwartzi 8y ago

The amount of fuel that you're quoting assumes that we don't ever reprocess the spent fuel. While the US doesn't do this due to proliferation concerns, it's possible to dramatically increase the longevity of nuclear power by doing so. This is likely what Oklo is doing. All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.

biglenny 8y ago

>First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.