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Nobody is extracting Uranium from sea water on any timescale that matters to you and me, actual living human beings today. Maybe in 2300 this will matter, but n

Nobody is extracting Uranium from sea water on any timescale that matters to you and me, actual living human beings today. Maybe in 2300 this will matter, but not in 2023 or 2063.

vlovich123 3y ago
That’s a fair point. But also existing terrestrial uranium should be more than sufficient & breeder reactors will help recoup what earlier gen reactors wasted.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  In reality it seems unlikely that any of those technologies is going to play a major role in the low-CO2 energy transition that needs to happen by 2060 (ideally, before that.) The timescale is just too short, and the existing (1970s) construction technology is not scalable, plus breeder reactors are even more experimental. Some kind of modular reactor design might change that, but they will need to get from idea to scalable construction to widespread deployment in about 30 years, while also competing economically with renewables and battery storage which are already past the research phase and being deployed right now.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Sorry but 40 years of R&D with substantial resources seems like more than enough time to figure out how to make nuclear cheap. And remember - it’s still cheaper than solar today without storage. Like we spent a long time on space but ultimately the things Musk did with spacex weren’t particularly capital intensive but still required a lot of R&D to pull off. Given that we know that we have lots of technological paths forward, why can’t we figure out how to build a nuclear reactor that we can continuously experiment with to figure out how to make it safer and safer as cheaply as possible? Like China had already approved molten salt reactors that fail safe - that means that all the other safety regulations we have from the 70s shouldn’t supply but they do today because nuclear isn’t a priority. Any reason we think that China is inherently more talented at building nuclear reactors than us?

Nobody is extracting Uranium from sea water on any timescale that matters to you and me, actual living human beings today. Maybe in 2300 this will matter, but not in 2023 or 2063.

vlovich123 3y ago

That’s a fair point. But also existing terrestrial uranium should be more than sufficient & breeder reactors will help recoup what earlier gen reactors wasted.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
In reality it seems unlikely that any of those technologies is going to play a major role in the low-CO2 energy transition that needs to happen by 2060 (ideally, before that.) The timescale is just too short, and the existing (1970s) construction technology is not scalable, plus breeder reactors are even more experimental. Some kind of modular reactor design might change that, but they will need to get from idea to scalable construction to widespread deployment in about 30 years, while also competing economically with renewables and battery storage which are already past the research phase and being deployed right now.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Sorry but 40 years of R&D with substantial resources seems like more than enough time to figure out how to make nuclear cheap. And remember - it’s still cheaper than solar today without storage. Like we spent a long time on space but ultimately the things Musk did with spacex weren’t particularly capital intensive but still required a lot of R&D to pull off. Given that we know that we have lots of technological paths forward, why can’t we figure out how to build a nuclear reactor that we can continuously experiment with to figure out how to make it safer and safer as cheaply as possible? Like China had already approved molten salt reactors that fail safe - that means that all the other safety regulations we have from the 70s shouldn’t supply but they do today because nuclear isn’t a priority. Any reason we think that China is inherently more talented at building nuclear reactors than us?