> but, here on earth... Well, yeah. If you assume we keep doing everything the same as we do right now, we'll get similar results to what we are getting right

> but, here on earth... Well, yeah. If you assume we keep doing everything the same as we do right now, we'll get similar results to what we are getting right now. You've put your finger on the core issue with that paragraph, but I suspect not in the way you intended. What you're not dealing with is that the likelihood we figure out alternative ways of doing things is extremely high. Or it would be if we didn't have a brain-dead regulatory state in the West that blocks us from doing things differently. We're talking a fuel source where we can fit the energy equivalent of 10 trains of coal into an 2L ice cream container - assuming no improvements from using Uranium. There aren't any laws of physics saying it has to be expensive to turn that into useful energy. We haven't really tested any part of the industrial supply chain to see how low costs can go. And any ideas the academics are having aren't being put in to the practice - or at least they weren't until the best and brightest over in China started getting involved. Hopefully it works out. Not to mention that, as you point out, nuclear is also a technically superior form of energy in a bunch of specific applications where weight and volume are factors.