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CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage
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.'"
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?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Uranium is for infidels and suckers. Iranium is the future of nuclear development!
I swear this is the same issue the guys in Battlestar Galactica seem to never grasp. "AWW FRAK, we're out of water/food/fuel again and now we need to risk our lives to get more RIGHT NOW!!!"
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.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
we're getting way ahead of ourselves. the world ends on 2012. we run out of uranium on 2013. we should worry about other things.
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).
There\'s no place like ~
This hairdryer?
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.
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....
You want to go out with wet hair in winter?
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!"
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Build the FBR on the moon.
I think we all know how that ends.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
A high-energy, high-accuracy energy beam transmitted from some installation on the moon? What could possibly go wrong...
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
The first human inter-stellar starship is not that bad of an additional unintended side effect...
and Nevadans/Greeks are not fond of that idea.
So what you are saying is that they aren't being team players?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Again 42 is the answer to everything.
All the world's a scam, and we are but its suckers.
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 /.?