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Nuclear is renewable for the same reason geothermal is renewable, and you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it https://www.tiktok.co

Nuclear is renewable for the same reason geothermal is renewable, and you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it https://www.tiktok.com/@nuclearsciencelover/video/7092135813848337706 https://www.tiktok.com/@nuclearsciencelover/video/7092135813...

rajamaka 3y ago
Why do people bother mining it?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Because mining it is relatively cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it is economical to throw away >95% of the fuel rather than try to burn it all or recycle it. Fuel costs are 10% of the cost of nuclear electricity. The vast majority is financing.
  - danans 3y ago
    > The vast majority is financing. The financing for nuclear is expensive primarily because: 1) The costs of construction are so high - so huge amounts of financing needed. 2) The amount of time before investors see any ROI is very long. A long time ago, when electricity markets were fully monopolized end to end, the long-term ROI on nuclear and other generating assets was guaranteed by the government, and the financial risk was borne by society. Now, electricity markets have been liberalized (at least at the generation level). Simultaneously, far less capital-intensive generation technologies have been created (renewables, combined-cycle gas, and increasingly storage). These technologies provide an earlier ROI for risk-averse capitalists.
    - bborud 3y ago
      And as Bent Flyvbjerg mentions in "How Big Things Get Done", projects that last for a very long time are all but guaranteed to encounter one or more black swan events and/or recessions. Bent makes a sensible argument for SMR reactor technology in that book too.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    > you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it > Why do people bother mining it? > Because mining it is relatively cheap. Something does not add up here.
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      Mining exists and is cheap enough that there is no incentive to invest in something new, even if it might just as good. Particularly because "just as good" is rarely a good reason for changing and investing, it would have to be significantly better. (Though I have no real opinion on whether seawater extraction really is just as good...somewhat dubios)
      - defrost 3y ago
        FWiW the latest in a long line of seawater extraction papers is (2020): https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ta/d0ta07180c https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ta/d0ta0... https://sci-hub.ru/10.1039/D0TA07180C https://sci-hub.ru/10.1039/D0TA07180C which has the weasel phrases uranium production costs could be reduced to $80.70–86.25 per kg of uranium with this fiber, which is similar to the uranium spot price of $86.68 per kg of uranium and suggests the possibility of economically producing nuclear fuel from the ocean. Not to disrespect their work, many small scale lab tests confidently assert that costs could be reduced and might possibly be economic. The fine print is that so far no pilot plants exist and no estimates on the capital plant costs for industrial scale extraction to achieve the possible unit throughput prices as yet exist. This may yet happen. There may also be a slip between paper and industrial plant at scale.
        mpweiher 3y ago
        > This may yet happen. Yeah. But probably not for a long time as Uranium from present sources is cheap (enough) and plentiful (enough) and if that should ever get more expensive we can start looking at the huge stockpiles of 95% unspent fuel that we call "nuclear waste". Burning that would (a) give us a lot of electricity and (b) reduce the radioactivity of whatever is left dramatically.
hef19898 3y ago
So we moved from using Twitter as a source to TikTok? We live in dark times...
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  You can also get the same information from here, which has an extensive reference section at the bottom. Disclosure: I wrote it. https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Nice work. Do you know of any studies looking at the cost of powering the world that way? And the time need to transition?
- dmix 3y ago
  I get the old man yells at sky reaction but it's just a short video... A snapshot of information which directly references with overlayed text a citation to the study he's discussing. Not much different than most HN comments which 90% of the time are only one or two sentences.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    None of this is true. Highly upvoted hn comments (the ones people read) bring receipts. This is just someone’s low effort opinion. For what it’s worth, the cost to extract uranium from seawater is actually a very complicated subject. It is generally cited that the cost is approximately 2x the mining cost, but that’s based on estimates for seawater extraction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280745206_Cost_Estimation_of_Uranium_Recovery_from_Seawater_with_System_of_Braid_Type_Adsorbent https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280745206_Cost_Esti...
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Well, at the very least give a short summary of what you are linking to.
c0pium 3y ago
TikTok is not credible. You can’t click the links or easily verify the conclusions. It’s the ultimate in trust me bro science.

rajamaka 3y ago

Why do people bother mining it?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mpweiher 3y ago
Because mining it is relatively cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it is economical to throw away >95% of the fuel rather than try to burn it all or recycle it. Fuel costs are 10% of the cost of nuclear electricity. The vast majority is financing.
- danans 3y ago
  > The vast majority is financing. The financing for nuclear is expensive primarily because: 1) The costs of construction are so high - so huge amounts of financing needed. 2) The amount of time before investors see any ROI is very long. A long time ago, when electricity markets were fully monopolized end to end, the long-term ROI on nuclear and other generating assets was guaranteed by the government, and the financial risk was borne by society. Now, electricity markets have been liberalized (at least at the generation level). Simultaneously, far less capital-intensive generation technologies have been created (renewables, combined-cycle gas, and increasingly storage). These technologies provide an earlier ROI for risk-averse capitalists.
  - bborud 3y ago
    And as Bent Flyvbjerg mentions in "How Big Things Get Done", projects that last for a very long time are all but guaranteed to encounter one or more black swan events and/or recessions. Bent makes a sensible argument for SMR reactor technology in that book too.
- stephenr 3y ago
  > you can get uranium out of seawater for the same price as mining it > Why do people bother mining it? > Because mining it is relatively cheap. Something does not add up here.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    Mining exists and is cheap enough that there is no incentive to invest in something new, even if it might just as good. Particularly because "just as good" is rarely a good reason for changing and investing, it would have to be significantly better. (Though I have no real opinion on whether seawater extraction really is just as good...somewhat dubios)
    - defrost 3y ago
      FWiW the latest in a long line of seawater extraction papers is (2020): https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ta/d0ta07180c https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ta/d0ta0... https://sci-hub.ru/10.1039/D0TA07180C https://sci-hub.ru/10.1039/D0TA07180C which has the weasel phrases uranium production costs could be reduced to $80.70–86.25 per kg of uranium with this fiber, which is similar to the uranium spot price of $86.68 per kg of uranium and suggests the possibility of economically producing nuclear fuel from the ocean. Not to disrespect their work, many small scale lab tests confidently assert that costs could be reduced and might possibly be economic. The fine print is that so far no pilot plants exist and no estimates on the capital plant costs for industrial scale extraction to achieve the possible unit throughput prices as yet exist. This may yet happen. There may also be a slip between paper and industrial plant at scale.
      - mpweiher 3y ago
        > This may yet happen. Yeah. But probably not for a long time as Uranium from present sources is cheap (enough) and plentiful (enough) and if that should ever get more expensive we can start looking at the huge stockpiles of 95% unspent fuel that we call "nuclear waste". Burning that would (a) give us a lot of electricity and (b) reduce the radioactivity of whatever is left dramatically.

hef19898 3y ago

So we moved from using Twitter as a source to TikTok? We live in dark times...

acidburnNSA 3y ago
You can also get the same information from here, which has an extensive reference section at the bottom. Disclosure: I wrote it. https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
- hef19898 3y ago
  Nice work. Do you know of any studies looking at the cost of powering the world that way? And the time need to transition?
dmix 3y ago
I get the old man yells at sky reaction but it's just a short video... A snapshot of information which directly references with overlayed text a citation to the study he's discussing. Not much different than most HN comments which 90% of the time are only one or two sentences.
- c0pium 3y ago
  None of this is true. Highly upvoted hn comments (the ones people read) bring receipts. This is just someone’s low effort opinion. For what it’s worth, the cost to extract uranium from seawater is actually a very complicated subject. It is generally cited that the cost is approximately 2x the mining cost, but that’s based on estimates for seawater extraction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280745206_Cost_Estimation_of_Uranium_Recovery_from_Seawater_with_System_of_Braid_Type_Adsorbent https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280745206_Cost_Esti...
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Well, at the very least give a short summary of what you are linking to.

c0pium 3y ago

TikTok is not credible. You can’t click the links or easily verify the conclusions. It’s the ultimate in trust me bro science.