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If we are insisting on end to end analysis of solar then we must do that with nuclear which means including not only the decommissioning but also the mining of

• jabl 8y ago
  Of course. And I don't think anybody is claiming uranium mining is a particularly benign industry. The point is that the energy density of uranium is so huge that you need an absolutely minuscule amount of it over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant. And if we ever deploy breeder reactors and reprocessing at scale, we can further extract about two orders of magnitude more energy per kg of uranium ore. Heck, with the amount of depleted uranium lying around as tailings, spent reactor fuel, surplus military nuclear fuel, with breeders and reprocessing we could power the planet for a couple of centuries before needing to start digging up more. We haven't deployed breeders and reprocessing because uranium is so cheap it doesn't make economic sense.