3 ms·
If you think we oil enriched uranium out of thin air, I’ve got news for you about uranium mining. You can reuse lithium and cobalt from batteries over and over,
by ok_dad 3y ago
If you think we oil enriched uranium out of thin air, I’ve got news for you about uranium mining. You can reuse lithium and cobalt from batteries over and over, but you can only use the same nuclear fuel maybe two times. I would love more nuclear, I was a trained nuclear electrician in the navy for a short time, but it’s not feasible in many ways, and the biggest today is its cost.
- hedora 3y agoBreeder reactors are something like 100x more fuel efficient than conventional reactors, and produce much less waste. According to wikipedia, we already have enough fuel to produce enough energy for the entire planet for 5 billion years (assuming 1983 global energy demand): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor The main issue is that they produce and then consume weapons grade material as part of the reaction, and you have to periodically re-refine the reactor's contents. That makes it hard to prevent people from stealing the weapons grade material. I've long thought that we should build robots to maintain the facilities, and a second fleet of robots that stay near the plant and shoot anyone they see on sight. That reduces the security problem to programming the fuel-handling robots.