Trump Orders Faster Build-Out of Nuclear Power Plants
www.nytimes.com
Among a flurry of executive actions, Mr. Trump directed the nation’s nuclear safety regulator to speed up approvals for new reactors.

It’s worth noting that he also fired many of the staff who know how to ensure that they’re actually safe, as well as the staff who would approve financing.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 days ago

    not renewable

    I mean that may be true, but the amount of easily available fuel for fission reactions is several orders of magnitude greater than that of fossil fuels.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

    According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today’s consumption rate in total. […] First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium—a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today’s nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies.

    This is only for uranium-based reactors. Thorium can also be used in fission reactors and is 3 times more common than uranium.

    In 360,000 years, I’m sure we’ll find a new way to make energy. Which is to say that we’ll probably perfect fusion confinement.

    Fusion:

    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/164282/how-much-potential-fusion-energy-is-in-earths-ocean#164291

    Some rough estimates (you can dig up more accurate numbers): The oceans contain about 321 million cubic miles of water (source: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanwater.html), or 3.5e20 U.S. gal.

    1 gal seawater contains roughly enough deuterium to provide the same energy as 300 gal of gasoline (maybe slightly less - that’s the part for your homework!), so the oceans are equivalent to 1.1e23 gal. gasoline.

    Conversion factors: 1 gal. gasoline = 1.24e5 Btu; 1 Btu = 1055 J; 1e15 Btu = 1 quad; U.S. annual energy consumption is a little under 100 quad; world annual consumption is about 500 quad.

    So, the oceans contain about 1.3e28 Btu = 1.4e31 J of fusion fuel, which is 1.3e13 quad, which is enough to supply energy at the current rate of consumption for 26 BILLION years.

    Worrying about the amount of nuclear fuel available is about a sane as worrying about how the porch that you built on your house will affect the orbit of the Earth over the next 3 billion years. Technically it will affect things, but the timescales involved are so much longer than anything humanity deals with.