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There's "uranium in the planet" - lots! - and "uranium accessible to humans" - not so much. The other fuel used would be plutonium and thorium, I believe. My u

by hguant 5y ago

There's "uranium in the planet" - lots! - and "uranium accessible to humans" - not so much. The other fuel used would be plutonium and thorium, I believe. My understanding (not a nuclear scientist) is that there's a cycle of enrichment and decay that produces more fissile materials than it consumes. Interestingly, from my perusal of wikipedia, it seems like you effectively can recycle the uranium isotopes indefinitely in such a reactor, as well as generating fissile plutonium and thorium. Again, the problem is that generating fissile plutonium is how you make a bomb

rsj_hn 5y ago
I think China is testing a thorium reactor now. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w China is leading the way, both in terms of adding coal capacity right now to address the power outages while also building out nuclear capacity for the future. The ability to act rationally like this when popular movements turn irrational is one advantage of an authoritarian system. No doubt many in the west are looking somewhat enviously at China.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  Except coal has gotten super duper expensive, and most Chinese coal plants are designed to burn high grade coal such as produced in Australia. Many can’t run at all on the much more common lower grade coal that they can find inside of China, or they can’t run effectively on it. So, the Chinese are spending way more money than they should on building super duper expensive coal plants that can’t effectively run on the kind of coal that they can get. And they have a coal embargo against Australia, so they can’t import the stuff that they could actually burn effectively. Meanwhile, solar panels have continued to get progressively less expensive, so that even in China, it is now cheaper to run solar panels than it is to burn coal.

by hguant 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

I think China is testing a thorium reactor now. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w China is leading the way, both in terms of adding coal capacity right now to address the power outages while also building out nuclear capacity for the future. The ability to act rationally like this when popular movements turn irrational is one advantage of an authoritarian system. No doubt many in the west are looking somewhat enviously at China.

bradknowles 5y ago
Except coal has gotten super duper expensive, and most Chinese coal plants are designed to burn high grade coal such as produced in Australia. Many can’t run at all on the much more common lower grade coal that they can find inside of China, or they can’t run effectively on it. So, the Chinese are spending way more money than they should on building super duper expensive coal plants that can’t effectively run on the kind of coal that they can get. And they have a coal embargo against Australia, so they can’t import the stuff that they could actually burn effectively. Meanwhile, solar panels have continued to get progressively less expensive, so that even in China, it is now cheaper to run solar panels than it is to burn coal.