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Growing share of Americans favor more nuclear power
(www.pewresearch.org)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Nuclear is also effectively 'fossil fuel' in the way that there are limited supplies if we can't magically make new reactor types work. But if the whole world switched to nuclear tomorrow we have like a few years of uranium.
I didn't know that! Where'd you come across that nugget?
In the context of burner reactors (the only fuel cycle that has ever been demonstrated for a full fuel load and the only cycle with any serious proposal for a new reactor).
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx
The amount of uranium the industry thinks they might be able to find (not the stuff already found) before the fuel alone costs more than renewable energy is about 10 million tonnes. Bear in mind the ore for the lower end if this holds so little uranium that you get less energy per kg of material processed than you do by digging up coal.
Each kg of natural uranium produces about 140GJ of electricity in the current fleet or 80-120GJ in an SMR (which is the main proposal for expanding generation).
Current world primary energy is about 550EJ/yr. Electrifying could reduce this to 300EJ, but demand is also increasing.
If you dug up all the known and inferred uranium reserves today and put it in SMRs like a nuscale or last energy one to produce 10TW (the average annual energy goal for renewables), it would run out halfway through 2025. It wouldn't even be enough for a full initial fuel load.
If it were all EPRs and AP1000s (which have an amazing construction track record) and no demand growth was provided to offset efficiency gains if electrification, you might squeeze a decade out of it.
Check my math? I must have missed something. I've got 5000 years if nuclear continues to make up 10% of global energy production with no overall growth in production, 500 years if we go full nuclear, no growth in production.
For ease of math, I've assumed production rates will not change. This is a bad guess, but it'll put the real answer between 500 and 5000 years.
This is quite the mental gymnastics routine. I'm going to give you a benefit of the doubt and assume you fell for it and are suffering cognitive dissonance rather than assuming you are lying on purpose.
You are conflating electricity and primary energy several times in a way that boosts the answer by around an order of magnitude each time.
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/WorldTrendinElectricalProduction.aspx
2680TWh is 9.6EJ, not 61EJ.
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
2680TWh is 9% of 29165TWh of electricity, not 10% of energy (either primary or final). Primary energy being around 600EJ by the same source. Final energy being harder to calculate because fossil fuels make a lot of waste heat (and you can choose to draw the boundary at the electrical power to the heat pump vs. the output), but usually estimated between 150EJ and 300EJ.
You could have very simply observed that 6 million is about 90 times 65,000, not 5000. 90 * 0.09 = 8. There are 8 years of fuel for current electricity demand (11x the current nuclear prodiction consuming 65,000t of NatU being ~700,000t) with the known reserves you listed.
Additionally 10-100MW scale SMRs being developed are much less efficient than large LWRs because the neutrons are largely wasted rather than making and fissioning Pu239.
This where you either apologise and stop pushing climate denial propaganda, or alternatively start a gish gallop about EBR and Phenix confirming you made your mistakes in bad faith.
I dunno if I'm right but here's what I did:
The rest is arithmetic.
Your screenshot literally says electricity in the url, not energy.
You're now actively pretending to not understand the distinction rather than reading your own sources. Why double down when it's already very obvious what you're doing?
Yes, that's where I got the 10% from. Do you think I should use a different percentage?
For anyone else reading this who isn't a russian troll:
617EJ is primary energy. 10% of this is 61EJ
Electricity is around 100EJ (90EJ when that statistic was taken), 10% of 90EJ is 9EJ or the quantity of electricity produced by nuclear reactors from ~65,000t of natural U.
Playing stupid games with arithmetic and pretending not to understand that electricity is a subset of energy just makes your attempt to palter look even stupider.
You seem really worked up and are being nasty. All of my numbers have sources, I've explained my whole process, and haven't been nasty with you.
What gives? Why you do me this way?
The consumption rate in the article you provided is in tons/yr. That consumption rate is for primary energy. 617 EJ is also primary energy. 10% was the best stat I could find for what amount of that 617 EJ was from nuclear. I've asked you if you think a different percentage would be better and you dodged.
Calculating out how long a finite resource will last with a fixed consumption rate is trivial and when I asked this question I was really curious why we came up with results that are orders of magnitude different. I'm not trolling you despite the paranoia that's set in.
Oh we've reached the crying victim stage of the troll. Nice.
I've pointed out the tactic you used several times now. You can read any of the comments I made or your own sources if you want to try and figure out why 9/600 isn't 0.1.
You are clearly bullying the OP. Seems like you are intelligent and like angry that not everyone else is on the same page. I think OP held their own, I'd have crumbled after only one or two replies from you.
You're giving them far too much credit. The bad faith misapplication of arithmetic followed by demanding that other people untangle their exact "reasoning" is an intentional misinformation technique. Typically employed by fascists and nazi apologists, but not all anti-climate trolls are doing it to engineer dependence on russian uranium and gas so it is hard to tell whether they're an astroturfer fkr rosatom, a fossil astroturfer, a uranium squeeze finance bro, someone who just really loves what's happening to the people in places like Arlit or Adapa, or just a bad faith idiot.
People who are misinformed or ignorant deserve respect. Bad faith trolls do not.
Okay, let's do it with your numbers.
We're still off quite a bit. How do you get a "few years of uranium" out of this?
You are still pretending energy is electricity (the goal and context is to replace all fossil fuels, not just electricity) as well as for some bizarre reason pretending (insofar as your 7031t number could he assumed to have any meaning) enriched fuel grade uranium is natural uranium.
Why are you still trying? Your bullshit has been thoroughly called, there is no way to pretend you are acting in good faith.
Or is now the time you go on your gish gallop about non-existent breeders and reprocessing?
No, that's the electicity number you gave me. Any idea how much ore you need to enrich uranium to 3%?
You're about to play another imbecilic game where you try and swap around enrichment fractions and burnup rates and pretend that tails assay is 0%
You need ~67500t to produce 9EJ in a large scale burner reactor as evidenced by 67500t being consumed to produce 9EJ in a year in lrge scale burner reactors.
Do that 90 times and you have produced 810EJ or a little over 1.3 years of primary energy.
Use that electricity more efficiently than fossil fuels and it lasts a couple of years to cover everything.
Put it in an SMR and it lasts about 60% as long.
Did it ever occur to you that you come off like as asshole?
I don't get this part:
followed by this part:
It sounds like your mixing up 90 years of power with 1.3 years of primary energy. (Also why are you now comparing to primary energy? You made a stink about this earlier.) The answer is beginning to look more like 100 years if we only mine virgin stuff (no recycling of fuel, no dismantling of weapons grade fuel, etc).
Where is your "a few years"? You don't mean using the electricity produced as primary energy do you?
You're getting not respecting you and being an asshole confused. You need to earn respect by not pulling idiotic word games.
Just like you can't comprehend the distinction between electricity and energy,
And I don't have to use your tortured intentionally wrong methodology.
6e6 tonnes. 80-100TJ/tonne in an SMR or 140TJ/tonne in a LWR. 300EJ of final energy per year. 6e6 * 140e12 / 300e18 = 2.8 years.
Very simple. There aren't tens of millions of tonnes of weapons grade U or spent fuel lying around so both are irrelevant.
You're attempting to start that gish gallop about breeding and re-encrichment again. Both are irrelevant to the topic.
Yikes! Take a chill pill homie. Or buy some weed if it's legal in your region.
Ah the siren call of a troll who has completely run out of moves. Thanks for the apology and acknowledgement you were bullshitting.
Eat shit and die. You're peddling misinformation.
Do you get paid for the bit after you break down and start hurling abuse and death threats, or just the bit where you were pretending 9/600 is 0.1?
You do eat shit breakfast or only after pretending 100 years is 3 years?
Read the thread above, chum. Your lies was thoroughly dismantled.
3 < 100, my smooth brained fren
Now you're getting it! Well done! 3 is less than 100. It's also less than 5000 or 500.
Thank you for the apology.
Actually we are able to reuse spent fuel. I know it's not the same comparison, but we have enough spent nuclear fuel to power the entire US for 100 years.
Thinking that a closed fuel cycle is probably possible in spite of spending 30 years and billions of dollars trying and failing isn't the same thing as being able to do it.
Good call let’s just burn oil instead.
No just don't vote stupid people into governments who don't have a plan and are just saying "turn it off at that point I am not responsible anymore so I don't care if there is not enough renewables"