CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage 581
eldavojohn writes "Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"
Re:I mention this (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Funny)
Solar power IS nuclear power, we've just offshored the actual reactor. Some loss of energy occurs during transport, though.
If we run out of Sun, running my hairdryer is going to get really low on my list of priorities, really fast.
Iranium? (Score:5, Funny)
Uranium is for infidels and suckers. Iranium is the future of nuclear development!
Re:You mean (gasp!) natural resources are limited? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I mention this (Score:2, Funny)
Am I the only one who's starting to think that as soon as we put all of our eggs in the solar energy basket, somebody will come along and say that we're almost out of sun?
If it does happen, I would think it was the speculators who bought all those sunshine futures and stock piled sunshine with the hopes of it going up in price.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I mention this (Score:2, Funny)
But what if we collect so much solar radiation that it affects global climate? If that radiation is no longer heating the surface of the earth but instead being converted to electricity won't that have an effect on the climate?
I doubt there's any one solution. The solution is to have a variety of energy sources. Man doesn't exist on Coca Cola alone (ok, some do but they aren't doing very well).
Re:I mention this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Water on moon, why not uranium? (Score:2, Funny)
The moon is the answer for all our future resource-problems..
Why stop at the moon? I'm sure we could pull all of our resource needs out of Uranus.
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:5, Funny)
Without good security you'll get Libyans stealing your plutonium, and then some crazy scientist gets a hold of it and puts it in a DeLorean....
Re:I mention this (Score:3, Funny)
You want to go out with wet hair in winter?
Re:The folly of natural resource-based energy (Score:5, Funny)
Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his postulated 5 billion years.
I can't believe someone would counter a plan to provide energy for 5 billion years with "Nuh-uh! It's only good for 2.5 billion!"
Re:Man up and build fast-breeder reactors. (Score:1, Funny)
This comment has been deemed by the Russian Federation to be offensive and is therefore banned.
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:4, Funny)
Build the FBR on the moon.
I think we all know how that ends [wikipedia.org].
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ideal FBR Location (Score:3, Funny)
and Nevadans/Greeks are not fond of that idea.
So what you are saying is that they aren't being team players?
Re:Alternative materials? (Score:4, Funny)
Again 42 is the answer to everything.
Re:Something just seemed subtly wrong with it... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The folly of natural resource-based energy (Score:1, Funny)
I can't believe someone would counter a plan to provide energy for 5 billion years with "Nuh-uh! It's only good for 2.5 billion!"
how long have you been here at /.?