[Accujack]

You're ignoring current SMR technology in nuclear.

Old style giant, expensive nuclear power plants are a non starter, but small modular reactors have a lot of promise, are zero emissions once running, and can be built using green energy in factories instead of constructed on site.

Fission power plants are pretty much the only way to go fully "green"... renewables are great and have a big place in the future, but unless humanity wants to drastically change their consumption of technologies and products requiring large amounts of energy for production (like Aluminum), they don't provide power in the right amounts and time spans.

[CaptArmchair]

A point few proponents of fission power tend to mention is that Uranium supplies are also finite. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium

Unless there are major breakthroughs in nuclear technology which become commercially viable in the near future - that is, in this 21st century - nuclear power, as it stands, is running out of time, and it does so faster then most people assume.

[08-15]

> Uranium supplies are also finite

So is the sun, and they will both last for roughly the same time, i.e. 5 billion years.[1]

[1] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

[CaptArmchair]

You just referred to a HTML page

... having a counter on the bottom which says:

> The number of hits on this page since 1996 Feb 12

... a HTTP Response Header

> Last-Modified Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:38:36 GMT

Stating that these aren't "the latest insights" would be putting it mildly.

My comment referred to commercial viability. It at this point in time, Uranium has only been extracted from seawater in a laboratory setting, per the Wikipedia article I referenced.

Yes, there's always "but technology will advance to a point where it will be viable". But then I'd argue: Beware of optimism bias when predicting the future. You don't know whether economic, social and political circumstances will converge over the next decades towards such trajectory that extracting uranium from seawater and using it in nuclear reactors becomes a commercial viable enterprise.

You yourself may be confident they will, but that doesn't make it so.

[08-15]

>> Last-Modified Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:38:36 GMT

Yes, John McCarthy hasn't updated his web page in a while, because he's been dead for nine years. Have some respect for the man who invented Garbage Collection!

But more importantly, do you think a lot of uranium has disappeared in the last 13 years? Has the use of uranium increased by an order of magnitude in the last 13 years? Have we forgotten how to extract uranium from low grade ore in the last 13 years? No?! Then how the hell is the age of this web site (13 years) or Bernard Cohen's book (35 years) even relevant?

> My comment referred to commercial viability.

Don't move the goal posts! You specifically wrote "Uranium is finite", and the counter point is that it is practically infinite. As McCarthy points out, this doesn't even depend on seawater extraction, because low grade uranium ores (phosphate ores, later Conway granites) are plentiful.

[CaptArmchair]

Frankly, I'm not willing to engage with you because of the tone of your comment and how you address me.

[Accujack]

Uranium isn't necessary. A breeder reactor could manufacture plutonium, or a thorium fueled design could be used.

Nuclear power isn't constrained by fuel scarcity at all. If anything, we have too much fissionable material.

[CaptArmchair]

Absolutely. I understand that there are alternatives and options. My concern isn't scarcity. It's that the confidence in those options is rooted in tenuous predictions about commercial viability in the far future.

That is, how a transition to these alternatives would conceivably integrate in and have an impact on larger market dynamics, and they way they might be either furthered or impeded by local, regional or geo-political dynamics.

[djsumdog]

and we've wasted so much of our uranium making bombs that can never be used as fuel. There is research in trying to use highly enriched uranium as a fuel source, but I doubt that will ever be a safe reality.

[Accujack]

It's the other way around. Highly enriched uranium has been easy to use as a fuel source for decades. Using less enriched material has always been a problem, actually. CANDU (Canadian design) did a pretty good job making it work, though.

Nuclear weapons didn't use much uranium, they manufactured and processed plutonium.

By the way, a lot of nuclear fuel in the past few decades has been reprocessed material from weapons that were decommissioned. I believe the US even traded with the Russians for their spare plutonium.

[HPsquared]

Molten salt, breeder and Thorium reactors can achieve orders-of-magnitude improvements, and aren't exactly groundbreaking technology. Reprocessing as well. Several examples from decades ago, and new designs in the pipeline. The main problems are politics and lack of funding.

[CaptArmchair]

The Wikipedia page highlights that there's certainly discussion, doubt and controversy surrounding those technologies.

The decisive factor of change I can see here is the unproven commercial viability of alternatives at the moment as Uranium is still cheap. Whether or not those alternatives become viable once Uranium prices increase isn't easily predicted.

So, I remain highly skeptical towars claims that dismiss the issue as merely a problem of "politics and lack of funding".

[Accujack]

Did you read the part about breeder reactors above?

You can create fuel for the SMRs via a centrally administered and controlled (to avoid nuclear proliferation) reactor, so no need to worry about uranium... in fact, it might make sense to avoid the ecological impact of uranium mining anyway.

SMRs are being developed that use other fuels, too, that are available in abundance, like Thorium:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645491...