| This is a common issue with any material reserves. You will hear people say that we don't have enough uranium reserves to have more nuclear power, or more lithium reserves for batteries, etc. People also used to say that about oil (remember "peak oil"?) but not anymore. The thing is, there's always only certain amount of known reserves. When there's not enough known reserves of something, the price will go up, and it is pretty lucrative to look for more, or even come up with new ways of getting that thing (see fracking). When there's too much known reserves, the price will go down, and it might not be worth it to look for more, because not only you won't get as much money, but the people who currently own reserves will lose money as the price goes further down (for similar example, see landlords being NIMBYS because new housing lowers their property). So yes, we do have 50 years of known reserves of Uranium on current consumption. But we also had 50 years or known reservers of it thirty years ago. Known reserves of stuff tend to keep around that number. That of course does not mean that there is literally unlimited amount of minerals in Earth's crust - but we do have enough of stuff for quite a while, Earth is a pretty big planet. Edit: that said I'm myself not convinced by "solar + grid scale batteries" strategy, I would rather see nuclear power and keep the batteries for cars. |