> 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.

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mpweiher 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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natmaka 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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pqtyw 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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...