A pro-nuclear page just slightly more optimistic than phys.org:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-l ... 90%20years.
Quote:
The world's present measured resources of uranium (6.1 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years.
If you could actually do breeders with a 5-6 year limit for a 15TW economy (which some people are arguing is already closer to 19TW), and you can actually - cleanly - multiply fuel value by 60x and not have that eaten up by other cost considerations, it could work for several centuries.
I think to really be credible they'd need a way to do this with SMR's. IMHO SMR's seem like they're only way in which you can really mass-produce nuclear the way SpaceX mass-produces rockets and drive the cost down. Most of the issues around breeder reactors relate to huge / highly expensive facilities that they say are 25% more expensive to run than standard facilities (and they have safety concerns with the molten metal in this case having fewer safeguards than water-based cooling). The main thing I saw cited as to why 'most' current SMR's couldn't handle breeder reaction had something to do with the amount of sodium needed for neutron containment.
I'm personally *not* an expert in this area (not sure if we actually do have any resident experts in the proper technical sense) but the experts I've heard talk about it aren't optimistic regarding supply nor the idea that nuclear could feasibly replace oil and coal.
Also not sure if any of this will clear up over the course of the the thread, whether no one at the top of the field can really come up with accurate estimates, or whether venture capital's already doping public info on this.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin