How many houses can a gram of uranium power?

1 gram U-235/day suffices for 727 (=1000/1.375) households. Uranium is 5,000,000 times more efficient than coal.

How much uranium is needed to power a city for a year?

In the previous page we saw that with one tonne of either uranium or thorium, we can produce a gigawatt year of electricity (1GWye), the amount you’ll need to power a modern city with a million inhabitants for a year.

What can 1 kg of uranium do?

The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants. One kilogram of uranium-235 can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy (2×1013 joules), assuming complete fission; as much energy as 1.5 million kilograms (1,500 tonnes) of coal.

Is there enough uranium to last forever?

The world’s present measured resources of uranium (6.1 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years. This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals.

How do you get uranium-235?

Uranium-235 is produced through uranium processing in a centrifuge, or through the Kovarex enrichment process. Uranium-235 is much rarer than its counterpart, uranium-238.

Can uranium run out?

If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet’s economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption.

How much uranium and/or thorium will we need per year?

How much Uranium and/or Thorium will we need per year? In the previous page we saw that with one tonne of either uranium or thorium, we can produce a gigawatt year of electricity (1GWye), the amount you’ll need to power a modern city with a million inhabitants for a year.

How much uranium does it take to generate electricity?

About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

How long will the world’s uranium supply last?

At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years.

Could a lump of uranium provide you with all you need?

“A lump of uranium, or about a Coke can of uranium, can provide me with all the power I need for my entire life,” said Michael Shellenberger, the best-selling author of Apocalypse Never during a NIASA fireside chat that premiered at the Digital Energy Festival. In 2019, 5.5GW of new nuclear capacity was brought online.