[natmaka]

I doubt so: 416 industrial nuclear reactors are deployed in the world today. They produce 10% of the electricity, itself 20% of the final energy, so nuclear power produces at best 2% of the energy consumed.

Nuclear power would provide 10% of the energy, which would be far from sufficient since it is necessary to electrify uses (in order to reduce the quantity of fossil fuel burned) and therefore produce more electricity, if we could multiply the power of the fleet by 5, therefore building around 1500 new reactors and keeping the existing fleet active. Hoping for this before 2100 would be absurd.

[pqtyw]

Well, its way too late now. 80 reactors were launched between 1960 and 1970, 185 between 70s, 237 in the 80s, in the 90s it was barely 60.

Instead if it kept doubling every decade it would be well over 10%.

Of course electrification of transportation etc. should have starter much earlier.

Obviously none of that was economical compared to coal/gas/oil back then.

[natmaka]

> doubling every decade

Uranium deposits mined under the right conditions can supply the current stock for at best two centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium

To extend this beyond that, we must hope for a revolutionary production process (pursued in vain for decades: breeders...), the ability to exploit less promising uranium deposits, thus tolerating increased emissions and costs, or the discovery of a large deposit.

Hoping for such a discovery is risky because intensive prospecting began at the end of the Second World War (the quest for nuclear weapons), and the rapid and sharp rise in the price of uranium (a bubble) that occurred around 2007 triggered a massive investment in prospecting, the results of which (15%) are very inadequate.

Therefore, multiplying the stock by five would leave at best 40 years of uranium certainly available under current conditions, and would therefore be an inept investment (one needs to amortize the plant).

Moreover there are geostrategic considerations: many nations don't have any reserve not want to have to buy uranium (creating a dependency) or technical expertise.

[mpweiher]

Since the 70s, oil reserves only lasted for another decade.

"Current reserves" is a moving target: once scarcity raises prices, prospecting makes sense again. Uranium is incredibly cheap. Prospecting is not worth it as there are enough reserves to exploit in the foreseeable future.

Seawater extraction is starting to be competitive with mining. With that, even natural Uranium becomes essentially unlimited.

In addition, we currently throw away >95% of the energy potential of the Uranium we use. Why? Recycling is not economically viable, because raw Uranium is far too cheap (see above). So facto 20 of what we've used so far is just sitting in Castors. And fortunately not in deep geological repositories, out of reach.

And then there's Thorium, which is significantly more abundant in the crust than raw Uranium. And of the Uranium, only a small percentage is currently usable.

Fuel is simply not going to be a problem.

[natmaka]

> Uranium is incredibly cheap. Prospecting is not worth it as there are enough reserves to exploit in the foreseeable future.

A huge uranium bubble between 2004 and 2008, which triggered massive investments for prospection... and a ridiculous result (15%). The cause is known: the quest for atomic weapons triggered during the 1950's and 1960's massive prospection, and there is no decisive way to better prospect and few not yet prospected zones.

> Seawater extraction is starting to be competitive with mining

This is periodically announced since the 1970's, and no-one could industrialize. Bottomline: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...

> In addition, we currently throw away >95% of the energy potential of the Uranium > So facto 20 of what we've used so far is just sitting in Castors. And fortunately not in deep geological repositories, out of reach.

It would be sound if a ready-for-deployment model of industrial breeder reactor. There is none.

> And then there's Thorium

Indeed, but not industrial reactor. Next.

[mpweiher]

LOL. An overview article that was obsolete even in 2016 when it was published. You need to get with the times.

"... the amount of uranium in seawater is truly renewable as well as inexhaustible."

"New technological breakthroughs from DOE's Pacific Northwest (PNNL) and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories have made removing uranium from seawater economically possible."

https://www.ans.org/news/article-1882/nuclear-power-becomes-...

More recently:

Ultra-highly efficient enrichment of uranium from seawater via studtite nanodots growth-elution cycle

Nature, 2024.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50951-4

High-capacity uranium extraction from seawater through constructing synergistic multiple dynamic bonds

Nature, 2025

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-024-00346-y

If you prefer a popular overview:

Uranium Seawater Extraction Makes Nuclear Power Completely Renewable

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

A speculative bubble is not the same as serious serious demand, and the actual demand never materialized. The vast majority of the "prospecting" was just speculators, not serious mining companies. And for serious prospecting, the 4 year time-frame was way too short, you just barely get done with the early stages of

- land acquisition and permitting

- Geological surveys (airborne radiometrics, mapping, geochemistry)

- Target generation

- Initial drilling programs

- Preliminary resource estimates (if successful)

You don't have enough to get to actual serious exploration and feasibility studies:

- Infill drilling

- Metallurgical testing

- Environmental baseline studies

- Scoping and feasibility studies

- More permitting

- Community consultation

Breeder reactors exist, they face the same problem as recycling: mined uranium is still way too cheap to make investment in those technologies economically attractive.

Should Uranium get more scarce and thus more expensive, the economic incentives change very quickly and then we can pull those technologies off the shelf.

Same for Thorium reactors: currently not necessary, as we have plenty of Uranium for the existing Uranium based designs. Doesn't stop companies like Copenhagen Atomics from investing, as they see other advantages in addition to very readily available fuel.

[natmaka]

> An overview article that was obsolete even in 2016 when it was published.

Declaring "obsolete" is, at best, a weak counter-argument.

> "... the amount of uranium in seawater is truly renewable as well as inexhaustible."

Indeed. The problem isn't on this side but on our ability to industrially harness it with a realistic EROI.

> "New technological breakthroughs from DOE's Pacific Northwest (PNNL) and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories

That's exactly what I described "new tech breakthrouhs". Many of them. Periodically, since the 1970's... and nothing industrial yet.

The last one dates back one year ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479709-new-way-to-pull...

Nothing industrial. Maybe one day. I'm grabbing my pop-corn while renewables gain momentum.

Breeder reactors had the very same trajectory: many huge new projects, for decades, delivered many (quite promising) lab reactors and even industrial prototypes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Notable_reacto... ), however not a single industrial model is ready to be deployed now and dwindling efforts are way less ambitious than they were during the 1970-1990 era ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants )

> A speculative bubble is not the same as serious serious demand

The last bubble lasted enough for the prospection to surge in global exploration expenditures and new projects, particularly from 2005 to 2009. See the referenced WP article ("Due to increased prospecting...").

> The vast majority of the "prospecting" was just speculators, not serious mining companies

Indeed, however those companies did buy serious prospection efforts. Do you doubt so (source)?

> And for serious prospecting, the 4 year time-frame was way too short

No, obtaining all green lights for a mine is indeed a 5 to 10 years-long project, however finding a new deposit and qualifying it is way quicker (1 to 4 years?).

> Breeder reactors exist

Then please name an industrial model of breeder reactor, ready to be deployed.

> they face the same problem as recycling: mined uranium is still way too cheap to make investment in those technologies economically attractive.

Nope. Officially, industrial breeding is no longer pursued in some nations (France being one) because uranium is cheap, which is a poor excuse because, if that were the case, why have they been searching at great expense for decades, and are they still doing so in various nations (in France, experts are calling for projects to be revived), when the price of uranium has never (apart from a brief bubble around 2007) been a threat?

Attempting to industrialize breeding is justified because achieving it would considerably reduce dependence on uranium and the burden caused by waste, to the point that even nations with uranium are becoming active: Russia is the most advanced, and it has large deposits via its vassal Kazakhstan.

Should Uranium get more scarce and thus more expensive, the economic incentives change very quickly and then we can pull such an industrial breeder reactor off the shelf.

> Same for Thorium reactors: currently not necessary, as we have plenty of Uranium for the existing Uranium based designs. Doesn't stop companies like Copenhagen Atomics from investing, as they see other advantages in addition to very readily available fuel.

Indeed! I'm not disputing that some invest, however past efforts towards breeders' industrialization were vastly more powerful, with no results.

Copenhagen Atomics does not sell nor announce any industrial nuclear reactor ( https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/products/ ).

This company recently obtained 3 million USD funding, and maybe 17 more later, for a potential 100MWt lab reactor ( https://interestingengineering.com/energy/danish-firm-molten... ). The sole French project aiming at obtaining an industrial breeder prototy (Superphenix) burnt 60 billion French francs during 1974-1997.

The real effort towards thorium reactors predates breeders ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center#Rea... ), and before the 1970's it was clear that breeders (esp. fast-neutron) were more promising. The result is known: nothing.

[pqtyw]

Having a massive head start at stopping or slowing down climate change would have been quite nice, though. Even if it weren't a permanent solution.

But yes, I agree that fossil fuels also had a lot of very significant political, economical and technological advantages over both nuclear and renewables which is why coal/gas/oil won. For renewables it might be changing now it just might be a bit too late...