Suddenly, the US is a climate policy trendsetter

[NNadir]

3. I actually referenced, in a post here, the mass intensity of various forms of energy.

Of course, it references the scientific literature and not some dunderhead faith based antinuke fantasy.

Since antinukes are not, in general, scientifically literate, denigrating, indeed, as one of them put here, "scientific screeds," it's unsurprising that they are not aware of something called "facts."

My post here: Material Intensity of Various Forms of Energy, a Nice Graphic.

Here's the reference and a picture from the post, just so any antinuke who is indifferent to education can see what the "nice graphic" shows:

Closing the Infrastructure Gap for Decarbonization: The Case for an Integrated Mineral Supply Agreement Saleem H. Ali, Sophia Kalantzakos, Roderick Eggert, Roland Gauss, Constantine Karayannopoulos, Julie Klinger, Xiaoyu Pu, Kristin Vekasi, and Robert K. Perrons Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (22), 15280-15289

Here's figure 3 from the paper:



The caption:

Figure 3. Materials needed for different forms of power generation. Figure based on data from U.S. Department of Energy Quadrennial Energy Review 2015.

It's, um, from a scientific journal concerned with the environment.

Of course antinukes don't think that uranium grows on trees, with emphasis placed on the important words in the sentence.

Neither do people who know science, although there are certain species of living things, notably corals, about to be rendered extinct because people focusing on their flat screen TVs don't give a rat's ass about climate change, that concentrate uranium from seawater. I did write a post about that species proteome here and elsewhere, but it would be a waste of time to recall it under the current circumstances.

This said, more than 95% of used nuclear fuel is unreacted uranium, and we have million ton quantities of depleted uranium on this planet, all of which is fertile. Of course, antinukes have a huge fetish about used nuclear fuel, which in their idiotic parlance is "nuclear waste," which they advertise as "deadly." But if you ask one of these fools to show that the storage of used nuclear fuel over the 70 year history of its creation has killed as many people as will die in the next six hours from dangerous fossil fuel waste - that would be 4500 people - they change the subject, mutter stupidly, or simply walk away.

I have calculated that unreacted uranium already mined, converted to plutonium - a well understood process - can supply all of the world's energy needs for about 150 years, much longer with process intensification, the recovery of additional exergy from nuclear heat. This does not include all of the radioactive thorium in mine tailings from the isolation of the lanthanides mined so anti-nukes could cheer for the ongoing massive rendering of wilderness into industrial parks for so called "renewable energy" that will be landfill 25 years after they bulldozers and diesel trucks used to build and service them have finished trashing that wilderness.

It's rather amusing how antinukes, benighted nickel and diming consumers that they are, always manage to criticize nuclear energy for things for which everything else is worse.

They. Just. Don't. Give. A. Fuck...what any other form of energy does, so long as they can attack the best form of energy through the prism of their ignorance, indifference and selective attention.

I expressed my view of the inexhaustibility of uranium on another website maintained by an Australian academic: Is Uranium Exhaustible?

If you're celebrating a holiday this week, hopefully it has proved enjoyable.