Nuclear okay but it's incapable of substantially meeting global energy needs unless thing radically change. Source
The World Nuclear Association (2011) conservatively projects 80 years of economically extractable uranium at the current rate of consumption using conventional reactors. The 2010 figure for installed nuclear capacity worldwide is 375 gigawatts. If this were to be scaled up to 15 terawatts, the 80-year uranium supply would last less than five years.
An examination of the relative abundance of chemical elements in Earth’s crust shows that many of the metals used for nuclear containment are in low abundance (Abbott, 2011). What is alarming is that the annual growth rates in consumption of these metals (typically in the 10 to 20 percent range)17 are enormous compared with, say, the growth rate for consumption of crude oil—which has dropped below zero in recent years (Abbott, 2011). If we were to scale up to 15,000 reactors, we would either rapidly exhaust these materials or drive them into a high-price-volatility regime, creating market instability. In a nuclear utopia, a new nuclear station would need to be finished every day. In such a scenario, the supply of containment materials would not be able to keep up with the construction demand.
If nuclear stations need replacement every 50 years on average, producing 15 terawatts of nuclear power would mean building one new nuclear power station—and decommissioning another—somewhere in the world every day. This is questionable, given that nuclear stations today typically take 6 to 12 years to build (Ramana, 2009) and 20 to 50 years to decommission
Moreover, Thorium/Fusion is not a magic bullet that solves all these limitations
Given all the above problems with nuclear fission, can nuclear fusion lead us to a nuclear utopia? The answer is no, because the underlying problem of neutron embrittlement will limit scalability as it does with fission. The rate of commissioning and decommissioning fusion reactors would be equally untenable.
Furthermore
If a nuclear utopia is not feasible, are we doomed? Is there a competitive, massively scalable alternative to fossil fuels? Yes, and it turns out that the only renewable energy solution that is scalable well beyond 15 terawatts is solar thermal technology...The amount of solar power that reaches the planet’s surface is 5,000 times mankind’s current global power consumption, or about 80 petawatts
I feel like 'economically' is doing a lot of work when you consider that the environmental damage of coal/hydro/oil is rolled into externalities and not priced in.
There's functionally infinite uranium within the Earth, however at a certain point it takes more energy to obtain uranium than you can get out of it in a reactor. The linked paper argues that; that point is well below an amount which would make nuclear viable as the sole energy source for our planet. And little of the environmental damage relating to nuclear, such as; the damage of nuclear waste or the very negative impact of uranium mining, is priced in either.
Uranium isn't the only fissile material that can be used in reactors, and the current mode of generation is based around rapid consumption of uranium fuel because they don't want reactors having fuel long enough to make materials for a bomb. If we could get past that, the waste fuel we have could actually still be used for power generation.
It's the devil you know versus the devil you don't. Definitely no shortage of environmental problems with mining for uranium, processing it, or disposing of the waste.
The "economically" part illustrates how you run up against diminishing returns as you get that low-hanging accessible deposit. The environmental problems only escalate as you mine uranium more aggressively.
Right but for the most part, the environmental damage doesn't contribute to global warming, at least. We kinda need to do everything we can to avoid that catastrophe.
Nuclear okay but it's incapable of substantially meeting global energy needs unless thing radically change. Source
Moreover, Thorium/Fusion is not a magic bullet that solves all these limitations
Furthermore
I feel like 'economically' is doing a lot of work when you consider that the environmental damage of coal/hydro/oil is rolled into externalities and not priced in.
There's functionally infinite uranium within the Earth, however at a certain point it takes more energy to obtain uranium than you can get out of it in a reactor. The linked paper argues that; that point is well below an amount which would make nuclear viable as the sole energy source for our planet. And little of the environmental damage relating to nuclear, such as; the damage of nuclear waste or the very negative impact of uranium mining, is priced in either.
Uranium isn't the only fissile material that can be used in reactors, and the current mode of generation is based around rapid consumption of uranium fuel because they don't want reactors having fuel long enough to make materials for a bomb. If we could get past that, the waste fuel we have could actually still be used for power generation.
It's the devil you know versus the devil you don't. Definitely no shortage of environmental problems with mining for uranium, processing it, or disposing of the waste.
The "economically" part illustrates how you run up against diminishing returns as you get that low-hanging accessible deposit. The environmental problems only escalate as you mine uranium more aggressively.
Right but for the most part, the environmental damage doesn't contribute to global warming, at least. We kinda need to do everything we can to avoid that catastrophe.