The world mined 60,000 tons of uranium in 2025 for 10% of the world's electricity. This means 600,000 tons would be needed to supply 100% of the world's electricity. There are 8 million tons of uranium reserves which would run out in 13.3 years if the world generated all its electricity using nuclear. What's more, total energy consumption is about 5.6x higher than electricity generation so if all the world's energy consumption came from nuclear it would run out in 2.4 years.
>>16968516No idea why you would make a thread like this, I suspect this is yet another reverse bait pro nuclear thread where you post stupid stuff with the expectation of being blown out like the last one. I will just point out that you make at least 2 elementary mistakes but won't provide arguments or specify what they are and leave it that.Only the price of electricity matters for consumers, you can always invest into a given form of power generation if you believe you have information that the markets lack.
Even less when using the numbers from this link: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/nuclear-fuel-cycle-overview?utm_source=chatgpt.com#Notes24 tons natural uranium per 1TWh of electricity. World electricity generation is 31,000TWh/year. That means 744,000 tons of uranium per year is needed to supply the world's electricity and 4 million tons per year to supply the world's total energy consumption of 167,000TWh/year (that was the 2024 number). Uranium would run in 10.8 years generating all the world's electricity and 2 years for all the world's energy demand.With these numbers total energy consumption is about 5.4x higher than electricity generation instead of 5.6x like I said in the OP.>>16968524Where's the mistake?
>>16968534see>>16968524
>>16968516>finite resource can't into forevera IQ thread died for this
>>16968536It's all pretty uncontroversial. Even pro nuclear sources will tell you uranium consumed at current rates will run out in about 100 years. 10x nuclear power and that gets you the same ballpark as the OP numbers. If you want to say there's 3x more reserves currently unecomical to mine it doesn't change things much, it's still on the order of decades.
>>16968545A few decades might be definitely enough, we already have the technology to extract more energy from the same amount of fuel compared to current processes with breeder reactors by an order of magnitude, along with tapping into unconventional resources we can move off of fossil fuels and eventually replace everything with purely renewable sources. Thing is, now PV cells are so cheap and quick that we might as well start using them now instead of using nuclear as a transition. However as energy demands would most definitely increase over the years, we should still consider it as a viable supplement to current renewable efforts.
>>16968550>extract more energy from the same amount of fuel compared to current processes with breeder reactors by an order of magnitudeThis is a fantasy like fusion. None of the handful of borderline experimental breeder reactors located in Russia and China have been reported to have this sort of efficiency.I agree on solar though. Current nuclear reactors should be abanonded entirely.
>>16968516You're forgetting the part that conventional nuclear reactors only use like 10% or less of the available energy of uranium and the "waste" could be used further to generate power.
>>16968516You're basing your assumptions on tech that's been purposely held back for >=50 years. Nuclear fission also includes thorium which is much more abundant. Also fission should be seen as a stepping stone to fusion as they have a lot of overlap.
Nuclear works rather well if your fuel is enriched to or near weapons grade, but governments around the world aren't going to be allowing that. You will be kept in the Stone Age because of government paranoia.
Better come up with some new ways to boil water boys because the old ways are becoming inefficient. I will that that its the tech and AI industry who will be investing most heavily into nuclear to build small nuclear power stations to power all their shit. Government seem to be leaning into 100% electric. But it should be a combination of everything while managing whats needed in regards to current demands.
Props on the bait.Just the thorium that is already discovered which we dont really have a use for and therefore not actively search for, is enough to power the world for 5000 years at current consumptions.
>>16968630>current consumptionsDo you mean electricity? Because there's no current thorium consumption to speak of, because it's experimental technology like fusion.Assuming you meant electricity though, 5000 years at 31,000TWh/year is 155 million TWh. There's an estimated 6 million tons of thorium reserves, so you're saying thorium would yield 25.8TWh/ton, which is more than its theoretical maximum of 22.8TWh/ton. Since these numbers are pretty close, this is probably what you meant. This is wrong though, because you will lose 65% of that in the turbine for 8TWh/ton. This means 6 million tons of thorium has 48 million TWh or enough for 1550 years at current electricity generation. This is ignoring that 8TWh/ton is completely fantastical and assumes perfect utilization.Unlike uranium, there aren't vast amounts of thorium in the ocean, which is why it's a meme.
>>16968639Your numbers are correct, I was being cavalier about accuracy. Indeed you would lose about 55% to the turbine if we use current turbines and systems. Minor improvements should be expected.There are actually pretty vast amounts of Thorium, with recent reports putting the potential reserves at around 14mn tons. But even at the 6mn you are referencing its still a good 1000 years of baseload power, not to mention that if you do it even somewhat intelligently you can utilize the residual heat for other applications.No current large commercial application doesn't make it a "fantasy". Everything is theory until someone makes them.Uranium is nice and all, but unless you breed, you cannot support any serious portion of our energy needs. Total uranium energy utilization is currently somewhere around 0.5% if I am not mistaken (bit higher in CANDUs).Saying breeding is a fantasy and will never work however is just outright counterproductive. Do you have any actual arguments against attempting a breeding reactor economy or do you just want to vent your frustration at the current state of things?
>>16968646I called it a fantasy because 8TWh/ton from thorium has never happened. Even in the hypothetical scenario it assumes perfect burnup which we've never achieved even with U235 for current current reactors.I don't mean to say it'll never work but in discussions about expansion of nuclear energy we should stick to what actually works and is practical and with that in mind, current nuclear reactors aren't worth building. Breeder reactors are maybe worth pursuing, but thorium would be an inferior option because of the vastly smaller reserves compared to uranium.Another number to consider: total energy consumption is around 170,000TWh/year, so if the world was fully electrified which we're aiming to do, the energy in thorium reserves is only enough for 282 years.
>>16968516Not science. Dont care if the lights go out either way.
>>16968516If you caught the displacement of matter in the dark, you could separate its constituents.
>>16968516mining will increase with demand niggaboo, plus there is also thorium
>>16968554BN-800 has been operating since 2016. It is not in the same category as fusion. The conversion ratio above 1 has been demonstrated in experimental reactors already. What you have not seen at 8TWh per ton is accurate but that is not the same argument as breeding. Breeding is about conversion ratio, not efficiency of a single pass. A closed breeding cycle has a ceiling of something like 60-80x current LWR fuel utilization. Where experimental reactors currently sit is less relevant than what that ceiling is.>>16968639The seawater estimate is missing from this thread. Approximately 4.5 billion tons dissolved at around 3ppb concentration, Japan has been running extraction experiments since the 1990s. The cost per kilogram extracted is high, which is I think the actual constraint here and not total reserves. The OP numbers look quite different if you include even partial extraction from seawater, which unlike terrestrial thorium does replenish from river runoff on geological timescales.>>16968543Yes.
>>16968850Seawater uranium runs out in 6048 years for global electricity and 1102 years for total energy consumption with LWRs assuming it could even all be extracted. Seawater uranium extraction is not proven at scale.I've seen various estimates for seawater uranium replenishment but let's go with 30,000 tons per year. This is theoretical to an extent and it's not exaclty known how sustainable that is. 30,000 tons per year with 24 tons per TWh gives 4% of global electricity and 0.7% of total energy consumption per year.
>>16968927>LWRAre you a bot? No one here is arguing for LWR, no one is even arguing for them IRL. Its breeder or no go.
>>16969049It's a pro nuclear shill that spams retarded stuff so people do the extra work to prove him wrong. Don't respond to it.
>>16969049I think it's a fine idea to not build anymore nuclear until breed reactors are figured out and shut down all LWRs as soon as possible to minimize nuclear waste in the interim. I doubt that's what people who say we should build more nuclear mean though.>>16969069Somehow it's pro nuclear to show that there's not enough fuel for existing nuclear technology and that the only way nuclear can work on a large scale is with as of yet non existent technology.
>>16969072>Somehow it's pro nuclear to show that there's not enough fuel for existing nuclear technologyYou have failed to do that though, several trivial mistakes in your posts since the start.
>>16969106The numbers I posted are agreed on even by pro nuclear sources like this guy: https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.htmlIt lines up with the numbers I posted. He just didn't account for turbine losses. If you multiply his numbers by 0.35, it lines up with what I've posted.It's no surprise that they line up though. It's basic math using uncontroversial figures.
>>16968545>Assuming everyone will be on nuclear ir that everyone will be consuming Uranium at the same rateWhy?
>>16968516They will find a fuckton more in Saskatchewan alone
i think nuclear is like oil, you think you've figured out where all the deposits are but the next day some random country discovers 100 billion tonnes or barrels using some obscure mining method
>>16968654>only 282 yearsjej
>breeder reactors don't exist >new deposits wouldn't immediately be discovered and exploited with increased demand >thorium doesn't exist >nuclear would ever be the sole source of energy This is the state of modern /sci/. Also the bigger problem would be NIMBYism, high up-front costs nobody wants to pay, and nuclear (weapons) proliferation. Politics pretty much singlehandedly sinks any chances of nuclear taking off, regardless of how good it is
>>16969383
