this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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TL;DR: If we switched over to nuclear, we’d burn through the world’s reserves of accessible uranium ore in less than twenty years. Hopefully the sun will last a bit longer than that.
According to 2022 Red Book, there are around 8 million tonnes of Uranium which we could extract for $260 or less, per kg. The current price for uranium is around half that, FYI, so nuclear fuel prices would have at least doubled by the point we’re extracting that last million tonne.
Nuclear power plants use around 20 tonnes of uranium per TWh, according to the world nuclear association, and world energy consumption is around 25,000 TWh per year, according to the IEA. That would be half a million tonnes of uranium consumed per year. Meaning we would burn through the world’s reserve of reasonably accessible uranium in just sixteen years.