Keis wrote:Can nuclear weapons be converted to usable energy for civilian purposes? If that is the case start processing them NOW. And what happens to all those weapons after the crash? Can anyone afford keeping them safely stored? unless they are all used the coming years...
Doctor Doom wrote:Yes, this is already happening. In fact right now a large part of world uranium demand is coming from decommissioned weapons and reuse of what is already on hand in reactors. There is plenty of economically recoverable uranium, as well, although without reprocessing the U238 into plutonium, this resource will suffer a Hubbert's peak all too soon. With reprocessing, you can multiply the time horizon on uranium by a factor of 50-60. A good source of info on nukes and uranium supplies:
Doctor Doom wrote:"Are you certain it is uranium that is being recovered and not plutonium?"
The real question is, if nukes were called upon to meet a very high fraction of energy demand, like say 80% of our electricity (the other 20% from renewables including hydro) plus 100% of our transportation (yet more electricity but diverted to production of hydrogen or alcohols), how long would the uranium last? I vaguely recall reading that under those circumstances the time horizon until you'd hit a production peak would drop to some ridiculously low number, like 10 years, unless you ran a breeder program in conjunction.
Doctor Doom wrote:"Okay, so where did I goof (this time)?" Did you remember to convert the tons of raw ore into processed reactor fuel?
Also, where did your number for the total energy available in a pound of uranium come from?
Regarding reserves, I posted a link earlier that give a pretty good overview of world-wide reserves.
MadScientist wrote:GREAT!
Lets build a couple thousand new reactors to power the world through the next thousand years. We can get the world's population up to 20 billion or so and then we will have space colonization and can start to take over the galaxy. woohooo sounds fun!! nuclear waste, unsustainable living, mass resource depletion, carrying capacity are all overrated treehugger drivel. Man rules nature. BIGGER! BETTER! FASTER! YOU can live the American Dream!
Anonymous wrote:The link is near the top of the thread, but here it is again:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/mining.htm
This gives 3.1 million metric tonnes as world recoverable reserves, pretty close to your figure.
This is U3O8 - same as yellowcake?
Yes.
So how does that convert to enriched reactor fuel?
MadScientist wrote:I think massive upscaling of the nuclear waste situation is a bit more than "political".
With the exception of a bigger/deeper hole to put it in, I disagree. The largest difficulty with it seems to be NIMBYism.
There most certainly is such a thing as unsustainable living- for about to be obvious reasons.
No. Unsustainable living is dying. Cue Clint Eastwood dialog, "dying ain't much of a livin', now is it boy?"
I wont "handwave" in your polite discussion anymore. sorry ><
thanks
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