[Tikib]

And peak uranium is a bit of fallacy really, whenever we need uranium we just look for more.

Because uranium has so much more energy in it than oil its stil usable at much lower concentrations. You could power the world for a 100 years at least with current generation nuclear.

With molten salt you could power it for 2000 years at least.

Just to be more specific here, once the high grade uranium is gone theres still a lot left in seawater and granite.

[ennui2]

Part of the draw of thorium is that there's a lot more thorium than there is uranium.

I really don't know enough about nukes to know if the technical challenges of LFTR are a showstopper or not, but it's one of the few technologies that has the potential to really make a difference.

[Simon_R]

Because uranium has so much more energy in it than oil its stil usable at much lower concentrations. You could power the world for a 100 years at least with current generation nuclear

I am not convinced, where do you get these figures from ?

And peak uranium is a bit of fallacy really, whenever we need uranium we just look for more

The same could be said of anything, however economics are in play, and the denser the element generally the rarer it is (All heavy elements are created in the last few seconds of a stellar reaction, lighter elements earlier, although I may have that wrong)

Molten Salt Reactor when they have been perfected...

Seems a lot of hopium here, and I would still like to see the source of those figures, and know how long we need to wait for MSR.

Thorium ..... sounds interesting, but so does fusion

[Tanada]

Hi Tanada

Given current technology (the only one realistic for this buildout in 20 years) this seems to indicate and enormous amount of uranium per year. I saw a figure of 200 tonnes per station per year, this is 3000 stations * 200 = 600,000 tonnes per year.
Forgetting the nuclear waste issue, this seems an awful lot, googling peak uranium there does not appear to be that amount economically recoverable.

All figures derived from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium

thanks

Simon

You probably didn't notice this so I will link you too it. Most of your concerns are answered here, anything not answered you can ask about specifically and it might end up added in.

fission-faq-v-1-5-t16818.html

[Tikib]

Because uranium has so much more energy in it than oil its stil usable at much lower concentrations. You could power the world for a 100 years at least with current generation nuclear

I am not convinced, where do you get these figures from ?

And peak uranium is a bit of fallacy really, whenever we need uranium we just look for more

The same could be said of anything, however economics are in play, and the denser the element generally the rarer it is (All heavy elements are created in the last few seconds of a stellar reaction, lighter elements earlier, although I may have that wrong)

Molten Salt Reactor when they have been perfected...

And theres three companies and at least 1 government working on molten salt reactors as we speak.

Seems a lot of hopium here, and I would still like to see the source of those figures, and know how long we need to wait for MSR.

Thorium ..... sounds interesting, but so does fusion

Well I picked the figures out of thin air but the point is basically that figures for world uranium reserves typical only count those which are currently economic to mine. If the price of uranium went up substantially theirs a large amount of lower grade rocks we could use.

[Pops]

If the price of uranium went up substantially theirs a large amount of lower grade rocks we could use.

Same could be said for any raw material, oil for example.

[Tikib]

I already stated that uranium is different than oil in that respect because its energy is much higher. The EROI from mining low grade uranium is still high.

[yellowcanoe]

High in relation to what? When the energy expended by the uranium extraction and refinement process is less than the energy contained in the fuel, then the effort becomes meaningless.

You've got vastly more energy in a pound of uranium than in a pound of fossil fuels so it could still be worthwhile from an EROEI perspective to process pretty low grade ore.

The main obstacle to new forms of nuclear power is that hardly anyone other than the Chinese are doing any research on that. The anti-nuclear lobby has essentially won the battle in developed countries, other than a few instances where more advanced pressurized water reactors are under construction. The complexity, high capital costs, long construction time and highly skilled work force needed to build a reactor preclude any dramatic increase in the number of operational reactors. Anything other than conventional pressurized water reactors or CANDU type heavy water reactors would require even more time to reach the point where it could be commercialized for use in power reactors.

[Tikib]

Terrestrial energy(Canada), Transatomic power(US) and Moltex Energy(UK) are all persuing MSR designs in the west.

[yellowcanoe]

Terrestrial energy(Canada), Transatomic power(US) and Moltex Energy(UK) are all persuing MSR designs in the west.

That's interesting, but I wonder if these companies really have the capitalization required to succeed.

Developing the CANDU technology took a considerable amount of government funded investment by AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited) and Ontario Hydro. The fact that governments were willing to make a large investment enabled AECL to attract some of the top scientists and engineers in the world to work at their facilities in Chalk River. For a period of time, the relatively small community of Deep River where most of the Chalk River workforce lived had more residents with advanced university degrees than any of the large Canadian cities! This is the sort of effort I believe would be necessary to develop a new reactor technology to the point that it could be deployed commercially. I hope I am wrong though, because I really don't see governments or corporations in the developed countries willing to make this level of investment for the amount of time it would take to succeed.

[Tikib]

Terrestrial energy seem to be the closest and they have a had some public and a lot of private investment. They are also taking experienced people from elsewhere in the nuclear industry.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/te ... ar-AAdht0V

[Simon_R]

Tiki

I do not know a lot about nuclear, however I worked with a guy who was in the industry at a high level.
I asked him about new designs and why they werent adopted (curiosity) his answer was in two parts

1) Current design is well known and cheap and reliable to produce
2) the physics of water at high temp. pressure is predictable and we have years of experience in this

Thanks

Simon

[Tikib]

Yea moving on from light water ractors is hard. But nuclear power has gone has far as it can with the light water reactor. To lower there price to compete with other sources of energy they must move on.

[Subjectivist]

Tiki

I do not know a lot about nuclear, however I worked with a guy who was in the industry at a high level.
I asked him about new designs and why they werent adopted (curiosity) his answer was in two parts

1) Current design is well known and cheap and reliable to produce
2) the physics of water at high temp. pressure is predictable and we have years of experience in this

Thanks

Simon

At the start of nuclear electricity production in the west there were two main competing designs, light water reactors from America and Gas Cooled reactors from the UK. The Gas Cooled reactors had some very significant advantages, they can run at a much higher temperature, they could be easily designed for online refueling like the Canadian CANDU reactors could be. However the UK government kept changing its mind every few years and when they decided to build some American designed reactors it undermined their attempts to export their own designs.