GRLCowan

I Would Be More Worried About Global Cooling

Lots of deceptive phrasing. He "would be" more concerned about global cooling -- sure. Anyone would be, if it were occurring. "When I see ... religious overtones", i.e., not in the present case.

Crude Usage: Three Cubic Miles and Growing

"Cornucopians think that technology will somehow save us" -- I'm like that, except I say how.

Crude Usage: Three Cubic Miles and Growing

Although nuclear energy use now is only equivalent to a tenth of a cubic mile of oil per year, the rate of discovery of high-grade deposits, minable for less than two percent the cost per joule that oil now sells for, exceeds a CMO-equivalent per year.

Also, while many nuclear power plants could be under construction simultaneously, and a completion rate of 50 per year would therefore not require of society the same burdensome allocation of labour as it now devotes to finding and mining oil, it is strictly false to assert that they would have to be that numerous. Their current smallness is due to electrical grids' limitations. When they are put into motor fuel production service, they can be scaled up to be each equivalent to the Alberta tar patch, or to Venezuela.

2 Top Energy Sector Bets

Uranium occurs in the ground as UO2, often dilute in other oxides but sometimes pure. If every bit of it within drill range could be brought up and purified, there would be about 200 cubic miles of it; interestingly, this is about the same as all the oil within drill range, regardless of recoverability. The difference is that with today's commercial technology -- no breeders, no recycling -- a cubic mile of UO2 yields 160,000 times more energy than a cubic mile of oil. That means every bit of it *can* be recovered, for much less energy than it will yield, and that in turn means that even though it is not renewable, we will be using much more of it seven generations hence than we are today. Seven generations after *that*, maybe a little more still.

When you know this, it is unsurprising that in recent years, driven by a uranium price that briefly topped $3 per barrel-of-oil-equivale... prospectors have been finding uranium at about ten times the rate of use.