> The whole nuclear industry knows since the 1950's that breeding is the only way for nuclear to really gain momentum
Breeders were being researched back then because it was thought that Uranium was much more scarce than it actually is. Because that is not the case, there was little reason to pursue the more complicated and expensive breeder tech.
We will eventually move in that direction yes but it's certainly not strictly necessary today. PWR/BWR is plenty good enough for the next 60 years. Plus commercially running PHWR reactors like CANDU can make use of natural Uranium and even Thorium.
No, because known accessible reserves are sufficient for at most 2 hundred years with the current fleet of reactors ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium ) , which produces approx 4.3% of the (worldwide) primary energy, and therefore at most 2% of the final energy.
In other words replacing fossil fuels with nuclear implies at the very least 10x the existing fleet, and known uranium reserves will then provide for 200/10 years, that is to say approx 20 years: investors will not be thrilled by this perspective!
Betting on new (now unknown) reserves isn't sound because an uranium bubble which peaked in 2007 triggered massive surveying... producing meager (15%) results. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_bubble_of_2007
AFAIK CANDU never industrially burnt thorium, please source (yes, it is in theory possible).
CANDU is a dead-end, there is absolutely no project nor R&D towards it. Even Canada, which established and adopted it, now only tries to build non-CANDU reactors. Where is the company or even startup pushing CANDU, I don't know of any?
5 nations are CANDU users, not a single one builds more of it. It is not bad at all, but there are many criteria and it simply, right now, doesn't check the right cases.
I must say, your sole sourcing via wikipedia is not confidence inspiring. At least link the sources directly from the footnotes.
We're not going to 100% nuclear energy, at least not in the foreseeable future so the concerns of Uranium supplies is not material. We haven't looked very hard for it because you don't need much. Plus there's literally an inexhaustible supply in the Ocean. Yes, it would be an order of magnitude more expensive than current in-situ mining. But that's still fine because fuel costs are a tiny portion of O&M costs of NPPs.
Your sources on the the "meager 15% increase" is a gross mischaracterization of the source which says: "The world's known uranium resources increased 15% in two years to 2007 due to increased mineral exploration." I doubt we looked very hard due to the other facts linked in your sources saying that most plants already had long terms contracts and therefore did not need to go looking for new fuel sources.
> AFAIK CANDU never industrially burnt thorium, please source (yes, it is in theory possible).
Canada has refurb projects going right now and the associated supply chains that would make new orders for CANDU very logical. There is very recent talks of this right now thanks in part to C4NE's release of the "The Case for CANDU" report which has caused a stir.
IMHO the referenced articles adequately concisely describe the facts, and provide sources.
> there's literally an inexhaustible supply in the Ocean
We try to obtain uranium from seawater since the 70's, with (as with industrial breeder reactors) grand announcements from time to time. Net result: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium".
Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...
> gross mischaracterization
Therefore, in your opinion, uranium mining operations weren't interested into launching surveying during a period of nearly exponential growth in the price of natural uranium because they already had customers?
Let's see: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium...
>> CANDU
> India is building 3 or 4
Indeed, thank you, and a relaunch in Canada could trigger a renewed interest.
although at 560+ pages it's perhaps doubtful you'd read that.
It's worthy of note that broadscale coarse uranium exploration gets "thrown in" with any airbourne geophysical survey that typical runs magnetic + radiometric sensors at the same time (saves fuel costs + 256 channel ground emissions give geologic structure via K + Th + U patterns )
Breeders were being researched back then because it was thought that Uranium was much more scarce than it actually is. Because that is not the case, there was little reason to pursue the more complicated and expensive breeder tech.
We will eventually move in that direction yes but it's certainly not strictly necessary today. PWR/BWR is plenty good enough for the next 60 years. Plus commercially running PHWR reactors like CANDU can make use of natural Uranium and even Thorium.