3 ms·

> the world runs out of cheap uranium very quickly. Citations ?

pfdietz 3y ago
World uranium resource information is readily available. For example: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... gives a resource, as of 2017, of 8 million tonnes. Note that the recent expansion in uranium exploration didn't increase the resource very much. A 3000 MW(th) thermal burner reactor uses about 250 tonnes of natural uranium per year. https://material-properties.org/what-is-natural-uranium-consumption-in-a-nuclear-reactor-definition/ https://material-properties.org/what-is-natural-uranium-cons... To "power the world" (by which I mean provide, as heat, the 18 TW of current world primary energy consumption) would therefore require 6000 x 250 or 1.5 million tonnes of natural U per year. It has long (like, since shortly after WW2) been known that powering the world with fission will require some kind of breeding, which implies some kind of reprocessing. If you are committed to that, burying spent fuel as is makes no sense.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  There's a question of how cheap "cheap" has to be. But saying "uranium cost doesn't matter because capital cost of the power plants is so much larger" is a left-handed argument.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  "Known resources" is always a misleading thing. Time and again we used this logic and concluded that the world has only 20 years left of oil, for example. Finding and proving reserves is costly. People don't just randomly decide to invest money to find new resources of Uranium. If there are 8 million tons of economically recoverable Uranium, and the world consumes less than 80k tons per year, that covers us for 100 years. If we were to double the uranium use for whatever reason, mining companies would invest more money into exploration, and the proven reserves will increase by a factor of 2. We are not going to run out of Uranium under any scenario in the next few hundred years.
- soulbadguy 3y ago
  Thanks for the references, I was always under the impression that uranium was a relatively abundant material. I tend to agree with @credit_guy in that we always tend to find more of the natural resources when the need presents itself. However according to your link, the grow of stock/newly discovered uranium is quite slow... kinda concerning

World uranium resource information is readily available. For example: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... gives a resource, as of 2017, of 8 million tonnes. Note that the recent expansion in uranium exploration didn't increase the resource very much. A 3000 MW(th) thermal burner reactor uses about 250 tonnes of natural uranium per year. https://material-properties.org/what-is-natural-uranium-consumption-in-a-nuclear-reactor-definition/ https://material-properties.org/what-is-natural-uranium-cons... To "power the world" (by which I mean provide, as heat, the 18 TW of current world primary energy consumption) would therefore require 6000 x 250 or 1.5 million tonnes of natural U per year. It has long (like, since shortly after WW2) been known that powering the world with fission will require some kind of breeding, which implies some kind of reprocessing. If you are committed to that, burying spent fuel as is makes no sense.

pfdietz 3y ago
There's a question of how cheap "cheap" has to be. But saying "uranium cost doesn't matter because capital cost of the power plants is so much larger" is a left-handed argument.
credit_guy 3y ago
"Known resources" is always a misleading thing. Time and again we used this logic and concluded that the world has only 20 years left of oil, for example. Finding and proving reserves is costly. People don't just randomly decide to invest money to find new resources of Uranium. If there are 8 million tons of economically recoverable Uranium, and the world consumes less than 80k tons per year, that covers us for 100 years. If we were to double the uranium use for whatever reason, mining companies would invest more money into exploration, and the proven reserves will increase by a factor of 2. We are not going to run out of Uranium under any scenario in the next few hundred years.
soulbadguy 3y ago
Thanks for the references, I was always under the impression that uranium was a relatively abundant material. I tend to agree with @credit_guy in that we always tend to find more of the natural resources when the need presents itself. However according to your link, the grow of stock/newly discovered uranium is quite slow... kinda concerning