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by RaitoBezarius 1641 days ago
FWIW, according to your own links.

> Uranium-235 is a finite non-renewable resource.[1][3]

> As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million tons in 2015). At the rate of consumption in 2017, these reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of supply. The identified reserves as of 2017 recoverable at US$260/kg are 7.99 million tons (compared to 7.64 million tons in 2015).[9]

They mention multiple (more or less optimistic) scenarios in respect to finiteness of U235, plus, they talk about the experiences using fast breeders and their current state with respect to market needs.
2 comments
fsh 1641 days ago
They calculate 130 years of supply at current consumption rates. Nuclear power supplies something like 5% of the global primary energy, so scaling this to 100% would deplete the estimated reserves in a few years.

Breeders would help, but have so far not been very successful. For example, the German Thorium breeder THTR-300 is considered one of the greatest technological failures in postwar history.

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RaitoBezarius 1641 days ago
Scaling nuclear power supplies to 100% of global primary energy would change the economics of extraction, do you claim you can predict these things? BTW, scaling it to 100 % is not necessary.

AFAIK, THTR-300 is only one of the different breeder models, CEFR from China <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reacto...> seems to be working, as a new model <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600> is being built since 2020, sure, recycling uranium is not needed at the moment, so you could argue this is not demonstrating the interest of breeding though it seems to be working to a certain extent.

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Manuel_D 1641 days ago
This supply is assuming we exclusively use terrestrially mines uranium, as well as no reprocessing. Seawater extraction can provide an effectively unlimited supply: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
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midjji 1641 days ago
I think you are missing the important part. Lowballing it, a typical 50 year old reactor produces about 10^7 megawatthours or 10^6$ in power per kilo of uranium. And that actually leaves most of the fissile unused. So... How much uranium can be extracted at a reasonable fuel price like 10% of the end user price? i.e. about 10^5$ per kilo?

Its silly to consider availability at 0.03% of the end product price.

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