Question by Chaos: How many nuclear power plants would need to be in the US to be the main source of electricity?
France gets almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power plants but it is a small country, so how many power plants would the US need to get around 80-90% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Best answer:
Answer by Beep
Freshman year of college, I was big into the whole let’s-use-nuclear-power for everything. I did the research and wrote a big report on it.
Turns out here’s a bummer:
If we ran everything on nuclear power for the next 12 years, assuming 100% efficiency (which is beyond us) and use of some fuels which we can’t currently harness, we’ll still be out of nuclear fuel by the end of that period.
Like fossil fuels, nuclear fuels are stuff we pull out of the dirt. Once they’re used, they’re used, and that’s it for them.
Hypothetically, we can get fusion going at some point, like our sun does, but that technology isn’t what our current nuclear power plants run on today; that is also beyond us. However, it is a very likely choice for power generation at some point in the future (although probably not the immediate future).
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
