Question by louis: Is there enough uranium for the USA to power itself by nuclear fission only?
If the USA wanted to, is there enough uranium in the US or in the world — such that the USA can generate all the electricity it needs by using nuclear fission power plants?
What about nuclear fusion… what fuel source would fusion use?
Best answer:
Answer by Godless Heathen
Easily. I always thought nuclear fission would be the best way for the United States to escape it’s dependency on foreign oil, using electric cars and such. But Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have soured the public’s opinion on nuclear fission.
Nuclear fusion uses only pure hydrogen as it fuses two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom (thus the name fusion), creating nearly limitless quantities of energy.
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2 Responses
I thought there was a limit to the available U. It is large but we use a huge amount of energy.
Fusion would be unlimited because there is so much H available in water.
We have not yet made a practical Fusion device because a Fusion reaction is a hydrogen bomb and very very difficult to contain. It has to be done with super magnets in a vacuum.
A uranium power plant is a very very slow atomic bomb which also difficult to control but we know how to do it.
Chernobol and Three Mile Island were examples where the uranium power plant got out of control and melted before it could explode.
Uranium plants produce radioactive waste that has to to isolated for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
In 2006 the USA only produced 2.5% of the world output of uranium.
The largest deposits (50% of the what has currently been discovered) are in Australia and Canada. That’s probably good news, since even the US is probably smart enough not to try invading either of those countries to get the uranium on the pretense of improving workd democracy or reducing the threat of terrorism.
In any case, known deposits will be exhausted in 100 years at the current rate of usage. Of course if it were used to geneate all the world’s electricity rather than a small proportion, it would be used up quicker.
Actually, we already have a huge source of energy from fusion, and the reactor is a nice safe distance away and doesn’t need any human maintenance to keep it safe. It’s called the sun of course. Harvesting the energy output as solar, thermal, or some other way is the best long term solution IMO but we need nuclear to keep us going in the short term (say the next 25 to 50 years).