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Beyond the fact that electricity-generation is once again only part of our emissions issue, there's about ~450 reactors worldwide and the uranium ore reserves g
by elproxy 5y ago
Beyond the fact that electricity-generation is once again only part of our emissions issue, there's about ~450 reactors worldwide and the uranium ore reserves give us around ~120 years of operation on current 3rd (/3+) gen reactors (short of having fast neutron reactors basically). Having 1000 in the US (or rather 900 more or 3 times as many globally) would have brought that deadline closer by the inverse ratio, and we'd likely already have tensions on nuclear fuel sourcing.
Agree with you on the role of government spending though, but there also needs to be a radical paradigm shift in how we view the economy and what needs to happen in each sector (not just within energy in fact).
- roenxi 5y agoThere are 100 years of uranium reserves available. Nobody is looking for more. If they were, they're probably going to find it. Exploration programs are expensive.
- elproxy 5y agoYes, sure, we can go mine the bottom of the oceans and extract it by centrifuging ocean waters, that probably would give us marginally more than a doubling of margin. Point remains: reserves are exhaustible, an exponential consumption may not be desirable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#:~:text=As%20of%202017%2C%20identified%20uranium,over%20130%20years%20of%20supply.&text=Current%20reserves%20of%20U%20are%20about%205.3%20million%20tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#:~:text=As%20of%2....