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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3298 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 2, 2023

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It's interesting that you bring up energy density, but don't mention nuclear, which blows everything else out of the water.

If you're talking about energy density of transportable power (i.e. oil as a fuel for vehicles rather than electricity creation), I'm willing to assume batteries arent an option due to energy density/materials required, but you should probably addresss why hydrogen and ammonia *aren't * valid options as an oil/gasoline replacement (other than the cost of replacing infrastructure, but if that's the argument, it's a separate one).

At least, that's my thought process on the matter.

Heavy transport can switch to lng fairly easily, I believe, and we’re much farther from running out of that than with oil.

Thanks for the response.

Nuclear is very good on the small scale. However there is not enough uranium to support longterm global reliance on nuclear energy. If the entire world would switch to nuclear energy today, the known uranium supply will be depleted within 5 years.

See the article: "Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy need" on phys.org.

I will give you that there is alot of uranium in the world's oceans, maybe this could be extracted. But this will cut deeply into the net energy gain nuclear gives.

Even then maybe this could feasible. Not so sure, i havent versed myself verywell in this department.

*Edit, ofcourse there could be alot of new uranium discoveries, but since the known supply is 'only 5 global energy years'. I assume the unknown deposits wont supply much more.

**More edits, For hydrogen there are big energy costs for compressing it into a density where it is feasable to use. As for ammonia i havent looked into this one yet, thank you very much!

All the best,

William

How do spent fuel reprocessing and thorium reactors affect the lifespan of nuclear energy reserves?

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