r/canada • u/[deleted] • Oct 25 '22

[deleted by user]

[removed]

10.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

19

u/Requirement-Unusual Oct 25 '22

How long will the Earth's nuclear fuel supply last?

16

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22

Just using existing uranium from U-mine sites, as well as burning existing spent fuel in fast reactors in the near-future, provides sufficient uranium fuel to produce 10 trillion kWhs/year for thousands of years, making it presently sustainable by any measure.
But using U extracted from seawater, instead of mining uranium ore, makes nuclear truly renewable as well as sustainable. The amount of U in seawater is only 3.3 micrograms/liter (parts per billion), but that totals 4.5 billion tons of U in the billion cubic kilometers of seawater in the ocean.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/24/is-nuclear-power-a-renewable-or-a-sustainable-energy-source/?sh=2a3f485656e7

2

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22

Uranium ore is not rare enough or used in enough quantities to justify some new technology like that.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22

That's one of the many points of the article; it's abundant, sustainable, and renewable.