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Nuclear energy is expensive, tricky to get right and constrained by Uranium. We have about 230 years at today's consumption rate left. Sounds like a lot but tod
by weatherlite 4y ago
Nuclear energy is expensive, tricky to get right and constrained by Uranium. We have about 230 years at today's consumption rate left. Sounds like a lot but today's consumption isn't much...many countries barely use nuclear. So imagine what happens if we need to increase nuclear by 10x ...oops now we have 20 years worth of Uranium left.
Also while not an expert on mining I do know that the best spots are mined first, meaning as/if we grow the dependency on Uranium it will only get more expensive to mine it in the coming decades.
Hey we're alright for now don't get me wrong. But 30-50 years from now it will keep getting harder and harder to sustain us unless we make some impressive breakthroughs that no one can tell are gonna happen.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today's%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo....
- fny 4y agoIt looks like you stopped reading. > Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time It also looks like you've forgotten about thorium, and geothermal, and solar... My point is that the article is tremendously lazy.
- weatherlite 4y agoI'm all for nuclear just lets keep in mind it's non renewable, expensive and tricky to get right. As for thorium I'm no expert but I assume you mean nuclear fission which is not a new concept and totally speculative at the moment is it was in the last 50 years. I really really hope there's a breakthrough soon that can be scaled cheaply. Solar and wind are very good but are built and maintained with fossil fuels and can't produce enough heat for heavy industrial processes like construction materials etc. We should totally go for them but they are a partial solution for a problem that might be unsolvable if we keep growing are energy consumption. I can't see why people resist the notion we need to bring energy consumption down.