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.
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.