- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
When asked about the federal government’s role, 41% of Americans say it should encourage the production of nuclear power.
Let’s get those new construction contracts signed!
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, 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.