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"today’s so-called environmentalists" The nuclear industry had decades to fix its economic, safety and environmental issues but sat on its hands instead. If ha

"today’s so-called environmentalists" The nuclear industry had decades to fix its economic, safety and environmental issues but sat on its hands instead. If half of the subsidies they received over that time when into research we would have fixed the renewable storage problem a decade ago. There is not and never will be enough uranium on this planet to completely power humanity for more than a few decades. Fission was only ever a temporary measure. Turns out "today’s so-called environmentalists" as the author disparagingly calls them, and not arrogant industrialist cheerleaders, had it right all along.

Blammar 4y ago
Got a citation for your claim about the U supply? And there are reactor designs that burn much more of the U in the fuel...
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152... Or Sabine Hossenfelder's explanation https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k?t=365 https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k?t=365 Current reactors use U235 which is less than 1% of all Uranium on the planet. Don't know about reactors that use other uranium isotopes, but if after 70 years they are still at the design stage, it kind of makes my point. It's just too late to turn that around. The article just overlooks this fundamental problem.
  - Blammar 4y ago
    Thanks for the links!
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Note that there's not enough uranium to use at 3% burnup. At 90% there's plenty for baseload providing we end growth immediately, but breeder reactors and reprocessing are even less likely to happen than an affordable LWR
erentz 4y ago
> There is not and never will be enough uranium on this planet to completely power humanity for more than a few decades. This source says up to 4 billion years. Nuclear power is sustainable. https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  It is not sustainable. But it can be more so, under some optimistic, unrealistic scenarios. This info is based on some projects for tech that hasn't yet proven to be economical at scale. In theory we could replace all reactors with breeders, develop a zero-carbon thorium fuel supply chain etc. but we haven't because it's expensive like hell, slow to commission and still not environmentally sustainable. What's easier and cheaper to fix, all that or battery/storage technology?
  - erentz 4y ago
    Batteries and storage haven’t proven to be economical at scale. And also aren’t infinitely sustainable either (renewables and their storage don’t grow on trees, they use more resources and valuable minerals than nuclear). So by your measure we shouldn’t do that either.
    - Sporktacular 4y ago
      Oh, so you concede that nuclear power actually isn't sustainable then? Okay. So if you want to pivot to batteries... look at how much secondary batteries have evolved in the last 70 years. Genuinely novel nuclear power plant designs have barely left the drawing board over the same time. It's pretty hard to conclude batteries have proven uneconomical at scale when the term 'battery' is such a fast moving target. No one claims infinite sustainability is a requirement, or even a possibility, but I see you dropped that in anyway. First, the paper in a paper battery, literally grows on trees. Unlike Uranium, which is relatively scarce and the cost of which, in $ and kg of carbon, after mining and enriching to 5% LEU is considerable. Enrichment techniques are unchanged after 70 years. About 100 times more common, and much much less valuable, is Lithium, the efficient sourcing of which (and its alternatives) is an area of active development. Lithium extraction is also damaging, but it is more deserving of research funding than a process for a fuel source that didn't advance for decades. In 20 years this won't be a discussion because renewables research will have solved these simpler problems.

Blammar 4y ago

Got a citation for your claim about the U supply? And there are reactor designs that burn much more of the U in the fuel...

Sporktacular 4y ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152... Or Sabine Hossenfelder's explanation https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k?t=365 https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k?t=365 Current reactors use U235 which is less than 1% of all Uranium on the planet. Don't know about reactors that use other uranium isotopes, but if after 70 years they are still at the design stage, it kind of makes my point. It's just too late to turn that around. The article just overlooks this fundamental problem.
- Blammar 4y ago
  Thanks for the links!

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Note that there's not enough uranium to use at 3% burnup. At 90% there's plenty for baseload providing we end growth immediately, but breeder reactors and reprocessing are even less likely to happen than an affordable LWR

erentz 4y ago

> There is not and never will be enough uranium on this planet to completely power humanity for more than a few decades. This source says up to 4 billion years. Nuclear power is sustainable. https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

Sporktacular 4y ago
It is not sustainable. But it can be more so, under some optimistic, unrealistic scenarios. This info is based on some projects for tech that hasn't yet proven to be economical at scale. In theory we could replace all reactors with breeders, develop a zero-carbon thorium fuel supply chain etc. but we haven't because it's expensive like hell, slow to commission and still not environmentally sustainable. What's easier and cheaper to fix, all that or battery/storage technology?
- erentz 4y ago
  Batteries and storage haven’t proven to be economical at scale. And also aren’t infinitely sustainable either (renewables and their storage don’t grow on trees, they use more resources and valuable minerals than nuclear). So by your measure we shouldn’t do that either.
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
    Oh, so you concede that nuclear power actually isn't sustainable then? Okay. So if you want to pivot to batteries... look at how much secondary batteries have evolved in the last 70 years. Genuinely novel nuclear power plant designs have barely left the drawing board over the same time. It's pretty hard to conclude batteries have proven uneconomical at scale when the term 'battery' is such a fast moving target. No one claims infinite sustainability is a requirement, or even a possibility, but I see you dropped that in anyway. First, the paper in a paper battery, literally grows on trees. Unlike Uranium, which is relatively scarce and the cost of which, in $ and kg of carbon, after mining and enriching to 5% LEU is considerable. Enrichment techniques are unchanged after 70 years. About 100 times more common, and much much less valuable, is Lithium, the efficient sourcing of which (and its alternatives) is an area of active development. Lithium extraction is also damaging, but it is more deserving of research funding than a process for a fuel source that didn't advance for decades. In 20 years this won't be a discussion because renewables research will have solved these simpler problems.