3 ms·

I'm more wondering how we get the nuclear fuel in the first place and how long we can keep picking it up until it gets too expensive to find/process? And are we

by Moru 7y ago

I'm more wondering how we get the nuclear fuel in the first place and how long we can keep picking it up until it gets too expensive to find/process? And are we still using coal powerplats to process the fuel to usable quality? Then it's not very carbonfree.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Excellent question. As with many minerals, uranium-bearing minerals are found in various parts of the world in various grades of ore. Some areas have high-grade ore, and others are more diffuse. The best information on this that I'm aware of is at world nuclear [1]. In summary, there is a whole lot of uranium. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... At the diffuse extreme, there's nearly infinite uranium in seawater, and lots of research has been done recently to extract it passively with special polymers. In 2016, this special edition journal summarized the progress [2]. It's still more expensive than conventional mining, but not so much that it's unreasonable to think we'll be able to economically get uranium from seawater. Then nuclear is renewable for billions of years, as uranium in seawater replenishes via runoff and plate tectonics faster than we could ever imagine using it. [2] https://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15 https://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15 This is all further complicated by the fact that conventional nuclear reactors burn about 1% of the nuclear fuel pulled out of the ground. More advanced breeder reactors with recycling facilities can get up to 90% of the energy (there are always some process losses). This extends known resources by another factor of 90x. There's also Thorium, which can be used as nuclear fuel. There's a whole lot of that too [3]. [3] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... Regarding power to enrich, France and some others uses nuclear power plants to power their nuclear enrichment and reprocessing facilities. In the USA, I believe there's still lots of coal and fracked gas powering enrichment plants. The gas centrifuge enrichment plants are so energy efficient that this matters much less than back in the day when we used gaseous diffusion. In the end game, the plan would be to do as France does and make the whole fuel cycle ultra low carbon.

by Moru 7y ago

acidburnNSA 7y ago

Excellent question. As with many minerals, uranium-bearing minerals are found in various parts of the world in various grades of ore. Some areas have high-grade ore, and others are more diffuse. The best information on this that I'm aware of is at world nuclear [1]. In summary, there is a whole lot of uranium. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... At the diffuse extreme, there's nearly infinite uranium in seawater, and lots of research has been done recently to extract it passively with special polymers. In 2016, this special edition journal summarized the progress [2]. It's still more expensive than conventional mining, but not so much that it's unreasonable to think we'll be able to economically get uranium from seawater. Then nuclear is renewable for billions of years, as uranium in seawater replenishes via runoff and plate tectonics faster than we could ever imagine using it. [2] https://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15 https://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15 This is all further complicated by the fact that conventional nuclear reactors burn about 1% of the nuclear fuel pulled out of the ground. More advanced breeder reactors with recycling facilities can get up to 90% of the energy (there are always some process losses). This extends known resources by another factor of 90x. There's also Thorium, which can be used as nuclear fuel. There's a whole lot of that too [3]. [3] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... Regarding power to enrich, France and some others uses nuclear power plants to power their nuclear enrichment and reprocessing facilities. In the USA, I believe there's still lots of coal and fracked gas powering enrichment plants. The gas centrifuge enrichment plants are so energy efficient that this matters much less than back in the day when we used gaseous diffusion. In the end game, the plan would be to do as France does and make the whole fuel cycle ultra low carbon.