4 ms·
1. Breeder reactors can be used to massively increase effective fuel efficiency. 2. Uranium can be extracted from seawater (virtually limitless) at an estimate
by deepnotderp 5y ago
1. Breeder reactors can be used to massively increase effective fuel efficiency.
2. Uranium can be extracted from seawater (virtually limitless) at an estimated cost of 2 cents/kWh
3. Renewables have even more stringent metals and rare earths requirements
- yodelshady 5y agoRe 1 - it really is quite astonishing how uninterested nuclear plants seem to be in burning their fuel. It makes perfect sense if you consider the original reasoning - to make weapons, then progressively adapted to make them less useful for making weapons. Still, I can't help but feel that fans of this mythical "innovative private sector" have a lot to answer for. Here's a 100-fold optimization in fuel use - not in fact a trivial cost, even for nukes - that's been on the table for more than fifty years, with the only drawback that nobody has literally given you the schematics. Now we're burning a shit-ton of gas and funding the tanks for the privilege.
- deepnotderp 5y agoWell, the fuel is only like 20% of the cost of nuclear power, with the majority being capex, so there’s really little reason to build even more expensive reactors with more regulatory issues to save on opex which isn’t even significant.
- ncmncm 5y agoOpex "isn't significant" only in comparison to capex for nukes. Nukes' opex is, like capex, outrageously huge compared to both for renewables. Every penny spent on building nukes instead of building out renewables/storage adds to global climate disruption.
- Tagbert 5y agoAnd thorium is in much greater supply than uranium