[optforfon]

One thing that needs to be stressed is that realistically there is a rather limited amount of Uranium than can be extracted from the earth for nuclear power. That if we could magically convert to 100% nuclear power - it wouldn't last that long.

from wikipedia

"Still, the world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of 130 USD/kg, are enough to last for between 70 and 100 years"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Conventional_fue...

reactors have a life of around 60 years I think. So maybe you could double the amount of nuclear power? But it's not like the world can magically go to 100% nuclear indefinitely.

[Turing_Machine]

That "arbitrary price ceiling" is exceedingly arbitrary. You get a lot more than $130 worth of electricity from fissioning a kilogram of uranium even with present technology. In current U.S. power reactor designs (no breeding) you can get about a million kwH of heat from one kg of uranium. If you figure 30% efficiency and 12 cents per kWH, that's about $40,000 worth of electricity.

It should be clear that even with present technology uranium is economic to recover at prices dramatically higher than $130/kg.

If breeder reactors are used the recoverable energy from a kg of uranium goes up by a factor of 100 or so, making that kg of uranium worth about $4 million in terms of electricity.

With that technology it would be economically feasible to recover uranium from sea water, and there's enough of it in the ocean to last for billions of years.

[wbl]

Reprocessing can massively increase utilization. All that U 238 can also be burned once it is Pu 239.

[unethical_ban]

Plutonium and Thorium are other options.