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> Lithium is harder to extract per power unit though, as Uranium is incredibly power dense. Y'all just love making up lies out of whole cloth. This is incredib

> Lithium is harder to extract per power unit though, as Uranium is incredibly power dense. Y'all just love making up lies out of whole cloth. This is incredibly wrong and you didn't even consider the idea of checking before deciding it was true. Stanning for nuclear does involve incredible density but it's not power or energy density. Weight for weight, the amount of lithium you need for a 1kW renewable system with diurnal storage (80-160g/kWh for 8-12kWh to provide for 1kW) and the amount of Uranium you need for 1kW of nuclear reactor (45-60MWd/kg @ 32% thermal efficiency with a 7.4:1 tails/fuel ratio with a 3-6 year fuel cycle) are about the same: Roughly 1kg. The lithium battery will last 2-4x as long as the Uranium fuel (12-20 years vs 3-6). At 1-7% the lithium ore is 1-2 orders of magnitude more concentrated than the 0.01-0.7% of most Uranium deposits (Canada's untapped high yield deposits are about the same as good lithium ore but they are deep underground, unique, and only a tiny fraction of what would be needed). The typical ore mined in a mass expansion scenario (0.01-0.03%) would have an energy density between that of coal and crude oil. Mining for the uranium would involve around 100-1000x the quantity of mined or leached ore and tens to hundreds of times as much leaching chemical. The Uranium extraction process doesn't end at the mill. Enrichment is just as involved as brine extraction. The end product of the Uranium fuel costs twice as much as an LFP grid battery and has about the same embodied energy per joule delivered (or double if from an underground or deep open pit mine). Diurnal lithium battery storage is irrelevant where good pumped hydro is available, and is far more than is needed to reach 85-90% VRE (which can be done with 3 hours). Early uranium was also hard to find, then tens of billions were spent trying to find more. There are fairly reliable methods of estimating how much hasn't been found based on the rate of finding it vs. the effort spent and the answer is there's not a lot undiscovered at concentrations that make fuel affordable. It's also largely irrelevant because any you find after you open your 3-8TW of nuclear plants (which are somehow built in 12 years) is not going to be developed before they all run out.

lazide 4y ago
Bwaha, 1kg of uranium produces 8.64 x 10^13 joules of energy when fissioned. That's ~ 24 MWH per gram, not per KG. You're off by ~ 3 orders of magnitude. So what are you talking about? Because your math at the start is so far off, it’s pretty hard to tell here.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  You haven't understood his post, he is correct under worst-case scenario for nuclear -> once through fuel cycle achieves 5% burnup, that's 4 million MJ/KG, or roughly 60MWd/kg Enrichment requires that we throw away most of uranium as depleted uranium, that's what he means by "7.4:1 tails/fuel ratio" That's gives us ~20 years of power at 1KW, but we have are converting to electricity, so it really only gives us 6 years or so. The main flaw with his argument is, in my understanding, he assumes a once-through fuel cycle, whereas France and others reprocess nuclear fuel. It also discards reactors that work on un-encirched uranium like CANDU. I am not sure about the ores, but I am greatfull for the detailed writeup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Reprocessing doesn't turn fertile material into fissile. It mostly just costs money and pours more fission products into the nearest body of water than Fukushim released. It also extracts the dregs of Pu239 and U235 to get another 5-15% of final energy out. CANDU + reprocessing is a bit better than a PWR, but still significantly under 2x the energy in the original U235. Closed fuel cycles are a myth so there is no need to specify 'once through'.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Just gonna double down on the 'it's so dense' myth huh? Do it with a real fuel cycle, real turbine efficiencies and stop trying to conflate the fertile content with the fissile. Here's a hint to get you started: the reactor fleet uses about 67500 tonnes of raw Uranium and produces about 2650TWh each year. New reactors are about 1.8x the average and most SMR proposals are worse. The world produced 760GWh of batteries from around 75,000 tonnes of Lithium. Also note that 2650TWh / 760GWh is 3500 which is less than the number of cycles an LFP battery will last.
  - lazide 4y ago
    If you’re going to throw out bullshit numbers, don’t be surprised when you get called on it. If de-rating, show your math. Which you didn’t. This whole thing is hilarious anyway, as I’m far from a nuclear advocate. Just pointing out you’re not actually telling the truth while going on your rant. And it’s all clearly apples to oranges with no sense. Lithium is not destroyed when used in these battery systems, it can be recycled indefinitely if we cared. It also doesn’t produce any actual power, it’s storage. Uranium is burned/fissioned, and actually is gone. And actually produces power.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Thank you for the detailed responce, am I correct in understanding this is for once-through fuel cycle? I was not able to find figures for total burnup once fuel reprocessing is taken into account. I think analysing large-scale transition to nuclear only makes sence with reprosessing. > The typical ore mined in a mass expansion scenario (0.01-0.03%) would have an energy density between that of coal and crude oil. This is really interesting, because I have seen a lot of hand-wringing about lithium mining, describing it as physically impossible. We seem to be mining 8.5 billion tons of coal a year, and 100k tons of lithium a year. Assuming 2% for lithium, that puts us at 4 million tons of ore. So we need 2000 times less earthmoving equipment to achieve the quantity of lithium we currently consume? I am assuming here that 'Coal' is the name for stuff that's dug out of the ground, so comparing 'coal' and 'ore' is correct for estimating earthmoving required. > Diurnal lithium battery storage is irrelevant where good pumped hydro is available To me the entire point of this scenario is, what do I do if my country doesn't have it. That's going to be the dilemma facing half the world.
- defrost 4y ago
  > I have seen a lot of hand-wringing about lithium mining, describing it as physically impossible. While cost remains to be seen, it is clear the amount we need to mine is much lower than that of coal. Very little mining or extraction is actually physically impossible, just as safes are rated not as "impossible to crack" but "takes an expert with best tools 16 hours to open", known measured resources are ranked by economic feasibility .. how much effort will it take to produce the end product (and is that cost worth it). Lithium | Uranium | Copper | etc .. there are pros, cons, issues and problems all the way through any mineral extraction process - the one solution not proposed nearly enough is for populations to just consume less. Re: Lithium specifically: > Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100 pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany, according to research by the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors. > Furthermore, lithium mining requires a lot of water. To extract one ton of lithium requires about 500,000 liters of water, and can result in the poisoning of reservoirs and related health problems. These are our trade offs. [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emiss...

lazide 4y ago

Bwaha, 1kg of uranium produces 8.64 x 10^13 joules of energy when fissioned. That's ~ 24 MWH per gram, not per KG. You're off by ~ 3 orders of magnitude. So what are you talking about? Because your math at the start is so far off, it’s pretty hard to tell here.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
You haven't understood his post, he is correct under worst-case scenario for nuclear -> once through fuel cycle achieves 5% burnup, that's 4 million MJ/KG, or roughly 60MWd/kg Enrichment requires that we throw away most of uranium as depleted uranium, that's what he means by "7.4:1 tails/fuel ratio" That's gives us ~20 years of power at 1KW, but we have are converting to electricity, so it really only gives us 6 years or so. The main flaw with his argument is, in my understanding, he assumes a once-through fuel cycle, whereas France and others reprocess nuclear fuel. It also discards reactors that work on un-encirched uranium like CANDU. I am not sure about the ores, but I am greatfull for the detailed writeup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Reprocessing doesn't turn fertile material into fissile. It mostly just costs money and pours more fission products into the nearest body of water than Fukushim released. It also extracts the dregs of Pu239 and U235 to get another 5-15% of final energy out. CANDU + reprocessing is a bit better than a PWR, but still significantly under 2x the energy in the original U235. Closed fuel cycles are a myth so there is no need to specify 'once through'.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Just gonna double down on the 'it's so dense' myth huh? Do it with a real fuel cycle, real turbine efficiencies and stop trying to conflate the fertile content with the fissile. Here's a hint to get you started: the reactor fleet uses about 67500 tonnes of raw Uranium and produces about 2650TWh each year. New reactors are about 1.8x the average and most SMR proposals are worse. The world produced 760GWh of batteries from around 75,000 tonnes of Lithium. Also note that 2650TWh / 760GWh is 3500 which is less than the number of cycles an LFP battery will last.
- lazide 4y ago
  If you’re going to throw out bullshit numbers, don’t be surprised when you get called on it. If de-rating, show your math. Which you didn’t. This whole thing is hilarious anyway, as I’m far from a nuclear advocate. Just pointing out you’re not actually telling the truth while going on your rant. And it’s all clearly apples to oranges with no sense. Lithium is not destroyed when used in these battery systems, it can be recycled indefinitely if we cared. It also doesn’t produce any actual power, it’s storage. Uranium is burned/fissioned, and actually is gone. And actually produces power.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Thank you for the detailed responce, am I correct in understanding this is for once-through fuel cycle? I was not able to find figures for total burnup once fuel reprocessing is taken into account. I think analysing large-scale transition to nuclear only makes sence with reprosessing. > The typical ore mined in a mass expansion scenario (0.01-0.03%) would have an energy density between that of coal and crude oil. This is really interesting, because I have seen a lot of hand-wringing about lithium mining, describing it as physically impossible. We seem to be mining 8.5 billion tons of coal a year, and 100k tons of lithium a year. Assuming 2% for lithium, that puts us at 4 million tons of ore. So we need 2000 times less earthmoving equipment to achieve the quantity of lithium we currently consume? I am assuming here that 'Coal' is the name for stuff that's dug out of the ground, so comparing 'coal' and 'ore' is correct for estimating earthmoving required. > Diurnal lithium battery storage is irrelevant where good pumped hydro is available To me the entire point of this scenario is, what do I do if my country doesn't have it. That's going to be the dilemma facing half the world.

defrost 4y ago
> I have seen a lot of hand-wringing about lithium mining, describing it as physically impossible. While cost remains to be seen, it is clear the amount we need to mine is much lower than that of coal. Very little mining or extraction is actually physically impossible, just as safes are rated not as "impossible to crack" but "takes an expert with best tools 16 hours to open", known measured resources are ranked by economic feasibility .. how much effort will it take to produce the end product (and is that cost worth it). Lithium | Uranium | Copper | etc .. there are pros, cons, issues and problems all the way through any mineral extraction process - the one solution not proposed nearly enough is for populations to just consume less. Re: Lithium specifically: > Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100 pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing a conventional car in Germany, according to research by the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors. > Furthermore, lithium mining requires a lot of water. To extract one ton of lithium requires about 500,000 liters of water, and can result in the poisoning of reservoirs and related health problems. These are our trade offs. [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-zero-emiss...