That's even more of a problem with the uranium ore required to feed into fuel rod production, however. Battery materials like lithium-iron are also quite recyc

That's even more of a problem with the uranium ore required to feed into fuel rod production, however. Battery materials like lithium-iron are also quite recyclable. The United States today has close to 100 GW of nuclear power plants installed (almost all built decades ago). Most uranium ore bodies seem to hover around 1.0 - 0.1 % uranium by mass. Each GW appears to require about 200 tons of pure uranium (enriched somewhat from the natural 0.7% U235). Assuming we take an average, that's on the order of (200 tons of ore/ton of fuel) * (20,000 tons of fuel rods per year) = ~4 million tons of ore per year (non recyclable). Batteries seem like the better option.