But what do you mean “long-term”, anyway? Eventually, the Sun will burn out, after all, so even solar isn’t forever. Today, nuclear power is not usually considered among the “sustainable” alternatives to fossil fuels and, since it relies upon uranium as a fuel, of which a finite supply exists on Earth, is classified as “non-renewable” and hence not viable as a long-term energy source. Finally, the mining and refining of the small quantities of uranium fuel required and the modest quantities of radioactive waste produced have a small environmental impact compared to producing, transporting, and burning fossil fuels.īut due to historical accidents, lack of imagination, government bungling and regulation, incompetent engineering and operation leading to a small number of highly-visible accidents, fear mongering by media and ignorant advocates of other technologies or abandonment of our energy-intensive modern civilisation, nuclear fission power never achieved the ambitious goals (“too cheap to meter”) it originally seemed to promise. Since its energy density is so great, nuclear power plants are compact and require little land compared to low density sources such as solar power farms or wind turbine arrays.

The energy density of uranium, exploited optimally, is more than a million times greater than than of fossil fuels, and producing electricity from it emits no carbon dioxide, smoke, or noxious gas pollutants. I am old enough to remember when the “atomic age” was used in a non-ironic fashion. When its development began in the 1950s, power generated by nuclear fission was heralded as the energy source for the future. Electrification of other large bulk uses of energy will require dramatic expansion of the electrical grid, from bulk distribution through local delivery to consumers. Battery technology has only recently made electric automobiles marginally practical, and is far from that required to replace turbine engines for air transport. Thus, any proposed energy source which produces electricity must, to replace current fossil fuel consumption, also imply the electrification of those uses which, in itself, may be a challenging prospect. While those speaking of “sustainable energy” often concentrate on sources of electricity, note that electricity currently accounts for less than 40% of energy use, with the balance direct consumption for space heating, transportation, industrial process heat, and other applications. consumption happened to be 101.2 quads, you can read the numbers in the chart as percentages with only a little imprecision.

in 2018 prepared by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, found and posted here in an earlier discussion by (Click image to enlarge). Using the United States as a proxy for the developed world, let’s look at an energy source and use flowchart for the U.S. Unfortunately, these resources are limited in quantity and either largely already exploited (hydroelectric) or intermittent (solar, wind) and poorly suited to provide reliable, inexpensive, “base load” power. The term of art for the goal of this quest is “sustainable energy”, which is often taken to imply “renewable energy” produced from sources such as hydroelectric, photoelectric solar, or wind power, all of which are ultimately ways of exploiting the energy of the Sun which, while neither renewable nor sustainable, may be expected to substantially exceed the time horizon of “policy makers”. All of these concerns have motivated searches for other energy sources which do not run these risks. Producing the additional energy with the same mix of fuels risks exhausting supplies recoverable at an affordable price, altering Earth’s climate due to releasing combustion products into the atmosphere, geopolitical instability due to concentration of resources in certain geographical regions, and pollution due to production, refining, transportation, and combustion of fuels.

Currently, fossil fuels supply around 85% of world energy needs. Meeting these needs will require the development of new energy resources and the means to deliver them worldwide. Smaller quantities of energy are sometimes expressed in terawatt hours, with one exajoule equal to around 278 terawatt hours.)

Nuclear fission uranium fuel