Demand for uranium for reactors seen jumping 28% by 2030 -report
www.reuters.com
Demand for uranium in nuclear reactors is expected to climb by 28% by 2030 and nearly double by 2040 as governments ramp up nuclear power capacity to meet zero-carbon targets, the World Nuclear Association (WNA) said in a report on Thursday.

Nuclear capacity is expected to rise by 14% by 2030 and surge by 76% to 686 GWe by 2040, the report said

This is only good news if it displaces thermal coal and gas generating stations.

  • Blake [he/him]
    -1•1 year ago

    To be able to have a stable grid all the scenarios have to include battery storage and thermal production

    Totally wrong - you need to source this claim if you’re going to make it. All of the studies I have found claim the opposite - wind power is the best for stabilising a grid both in energy demand and frequency response. With renewables and pumped storage there is no need for batteries or for fossil/nuclear power.

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      The source is at the bottom of my comment, you can refer to it. It’s only in french unfortunately but nothing an online translator can’t help with.

      On the other hand you are welcome to provide your sources too.

      • Blake [he/him]
        0•1 year ago

        I can’t read French well enough to really dig in to your source and the website doesn’t seem to work for Google translate and it’s too much text to copy/paste, sorry, so I can’t really confirm what you say except the fact that I looked on the site and I saw that they didn’t include pumped storage, which seems extremely foolish. I’m guessing that they were bribed by the nuclear power companies in some way.

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          If you go into the detailed explanation (and can read French) they do have some hydraulic pumping included in their “batteries” section.

          In their 100% renewables scénario on a peak consumption (105gw) hour and peak energy production (sun at zenith) they would store the excess production like such:

          • 7.2gw to water pumping
          • 22gw to static batteries
          • 2gw back to the grid (chatting electric vehicles I guess).

          Also even in their most nuclear scenario (50% nuclear, 50% renewables) they still include 7.2gw of water pumping.

          I’m curious of why you put so much value in water pumping? As a Quebecois I have a small notion of how disruptive (flooding of vast areas of land, massive amounts of concrete, dead rivers downstream of the dam ) water reservoirs for hydroelectricity can be and I have a hard time imagining a viable way of relying extensively on that technique.