Easily processed uranium will last us 80 years at current consumption rates. If you start building current nuclear reactor designs everywhere, we'll run out of it in less than 40 years. Then the price will skyrocket, and nuclear is already more expensive than renewables.
We need different nuclear reactors, fast reactors or thorium that use uranium more efficiently to stave this off, but they're more dangerous and still experimental, respectively.
I think we're better off using that nuclear money into building lots of grid storage for renewables.
> Easily processed uranium will last us 80 years at current consumption rates. If you start building current nuclear reactor designs everywhere, we'll run out of it in less than 40 years.
This is a little pessimistic: these numbers rely on current proven reserves without reprocessing. Of course, if you want to use a bunch more uranium, prices will go up and the number of proven reserves will increase. This won't necessarily take a massive price swing-- heck, even at current prices new reserves will continue to be found.
> Then the price will skyrocket, and nuclear is already more expensive than renewables.
Fuel is a negligible portion of the cost of nuclear. You could triple the cost of fuel without materially impacting the operating costs of a reactor, and the overall costs of nuclear energy are not dominated by operating costs, but instead capital costs.
And, we're leaving out that reprocessing fuel is possible and proven (though there are proliferation concerns0.
>> we'll run out of it in less than 40 years. Then the price will skyrocket
This has already been addressed. Natural uranium can be gathered from seawater at about 2 to 5x the current cost. Considering how small fuel costs are in nuclear, that isn't much of a problem. And the amount available from all the world's oceans is orders of magnitude greater than that available from terrestrial mines. Even if we start extracting vast quantities from seawater some believe that more will be leached from rock, renewing the supply.
"The advances by PNNL and ORNL have reduced the cost of extraction by a factor of four in just 5 years, but the cost is still about $200/lb compared to traditional uranium mining which ranges between $10 and $120/lb."
Given reactors can take 10-20 years to be built and that they don't expect to make profit for decades, if the 40-year figure is true, then it likely is a good reason not to.
We need different nuclear reactors, fast reactors or thorium that use uranium more efficiently to stave this off, but they're more dangerous and still experimental, respectively.
I think we're better off using that nuclear money into building lots of grid storage for renewables.