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Uranium can be stockpiled for years in advance, relatively easily. Enough to tide over a small war while you're setting up domestic production. And China should
by cyberax 1y ago
Uranium can be stockpiled for years in advance, relatively easily. Enough to tide over a small war while you're setting up domestic production. And China should have enough low-grade ores for that.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Uranium can be stockpiled for years in advance, relatively easily So can oil. Energy security is an important priority for a global power. Stockpiles are good. Own supply chains are better.
- Ericson2314 1y agoUranium is far, far energy denser than any fossil fuel, and thus much easier to stockpile.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Uranium is far, far energy denser than any fossil fuel, and thus much easier to stockpile Sure. That doesn't remove stockpiles' inherent disadvantages: finiteness and vulnerability. Relying on uranium stockpiles would immediately put China at a known limit in a war of attrition that wouldn't constrain their adversaries.
- Qwertious 1y agoA sufficiently large stockpile of uranium gives China time to simply pivot away from depending on imported Uranium (either by building new mines locally or building out solar or such). An equivalent stockpile of oil simply isn't feasible, if only because oil is usually used directly and not via a source-agnostic electrical grid.
- Ericson2314 1y agoIs 150 vs 250 years of energy reserves a disadvantage in practice?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Is 150 vs 250 years of energy reserves a disadvantage in practice? Reserves != stockpiles.
- Ericson2314 1y agoI know. I am not saying I got the order of magnitude exactly right, just pointing out beyond a certain threshold the size of the stockpile doesn't matter. I suspect that if a nation state puts its mind to it, stockpiles great enough to last a war are totally possible.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoWhich is why renewables are even better. Zero fuel input.
- realusername 1y agoWell no, no country on earth has 5 years worth of oil stockpile, logistically it's impossible. Nothing can compete with the energy density of uranium.
- dotancohen 1y agoArguably Qatar does, as do most other nations who produce it locally. That is exactly GP's point. Oil is relatively easily, inexpensively, and quickly mined and refined. Compared to, say, uranium.
- realusername 1y agoThat's not a stockpile, they have to extract and refine it to use it. Russia understood it the hard way with the refineries attacks. And no, oil is more expensive (especially nowadays) to extract than uranium. There's a reason nobody ever became rich with a uranium mine, all the value is in the plant and the market price barely covers extracting it, some mines even closed because of the price being too low.
- dotancohen 1y agoWe're not talking about ore, rather fuel. Uranium ore might be inexpensive, I don't know, but converting that ore into fuel is not an easy task. I'm guessing that the reason it's not profitable is that so little of it is actually needed, relative to oil.
- mc32 1y agoAlso, they can bring it in by rail from Russia. So they can avoid the seaward path.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> they can bring it in by rail from Russia Uranium is better for Chinese energy security than oil. But this still leaves China at Moscow's mercy. That's not too differet, energywise, than the situation is now.
- branko_d 1y agoChina imports substantially all of its uranium from Kazakhstan and Namibia, and a tiny bit from US. Russia is insignificant. https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/CHN/year/2023/tradeflow/Imports/partner/ALL/product/284410 https://wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/CHN/yea...