Nuclear power

Summary

Considering the different types of nuclear power, it seems that thorium power is the one with the least problems. Here's a comparison:

Type of nuclear power	Problems if scaled up
	Fuel scarcity	Weapons proliferation	Nuclear waste
Conventional nuclear power (status quo)	Problem	Low risk	Problem
Conventional small nuclear reactors	Problem	High risk	Problem
Uranium-238 breeder reactors iAdditional benefit: Uranium-238 reactors would make use of existing nuclear waste, which has been left over from decades of conventional nuclear power.	Abundant	High risk	Almost none
Thorium-232 breeder reactors	Abundant	Low risk	Almost none
Fusion (not viable yet)	Abundant	Low risk	Almost none
^ For more details, follow these links in the leftmost column.

Fuel scarcity

Uranium occurs naturally as a mix of two isotopes: uranium-235 (0.7%) and uranium-238 (99.3%).

uranium.reserves

8.070 million tonnes uranium_natural

Global uranium mineral reserves, measured in energy units

The calculator understands "tonnes uranium_natural" as an energy unit. It's based on the fact that natural uranium is just 0.7% uranium-235 (the isotope we extract energy from). The rest is uranium-238, which isn't useful for energy unless we use breeder reactors.

Citation:
Uranium 2020: Resources, Production and Demand ('Red Book')
"The total recoverable identified resources to $260/kg U is 8.070 million tonnes U."

nuclear_power_plant.efficiency

33%

Electrical output divided by the heat energy of the nuclear reactor

Nuclear power plants convert heat (from uranium-235, currently) into electricity. The process is approximately 33% efficient.

Citation: Key World Energy Statistics 2020 (IEA report) - Page 73 - Glossary - Nuclear

energy.tfc

9937.70 Mtoe/year

Global energy usage - total final consumption (TFC)

Includes: fuel (80.7%) + electricity (19.3%) AFTER it is generated.

Does not include the fuel used in generating electricity. See [energy.tes] for that.

Citation: "Key World Energy Statistics 2020" IEA
- Page 47 - Simplified energy balance table - World energy balance, 2018

• Conventional nuclear power uses only the uranium-235 part of the fuel. The uranium-238 becomes nuclear waste.
  • If all the world's energy were to be produced this way, we'd run out of uranium-235 in just 4 years.

(see maths) uranium.reserves * nuclear_power_plant.efficiencyyears energy.tfc(calculation loading) (more)~ We'd run out even faster if all nations were developed.

~ In either case, conventional nuclear power can't really meet global energy demands. Best case, it might be sufficient for baseload electricity only (which is a smaller part of total energy demand). 💬 discussion Uranium can also be obtained from seawater, but doing that is so energy-intensive that we wouldn't "break even" unless we were to use both the U-235 and U-238 components.

• Breeder reactors can make use of the uranium-238
  (by first converting it to plutonium-239)
  • But that comes with a lot of risks regarding nuclear weapons proliferation.

• Breeder reactors can also make use of thorium-232
  (by first converting it to uranium-233)
  • Overall, a less weaponizable fuel.
  • In terms of mining, thorium is about as abundant as uranium. It occurs naturally mixed with discussion Thorium is currently considered a by-product of rare-earth mining. But if thorium power were scaled up enough, maybe the other rare-earth elements would become the by-products? neodymium and other rare earth discussion Note that the term "rare earth" is a category of elements, named a long time ago when they were thought to be scarce. Turns out they are not as scarce as previously thought. There are 17 rare earth elements (REEs): neodymium, dysprosium, scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, holmium, rebium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium. metals, which we would need anyway for the magnets in electric vehicle motors.
  • Thorium can also be found in ordinary soil in low concentrations. ^{[ELABORATION needed]}

Next steps

• Next steps for thorium power