When do we run out of uranium? How much is used per year?

edpell

When do we run out of uranium? How much is used per year? How much is in stock piles? How much is in deposits that we can afford to extract?

Astronuc

Last decades world-wide production
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/uprod.html

Uranium Supply - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html

Nuclear fuel cycle pages - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf03.html (includes inf75)

Search the site for "Uranium reserves" and many reports will be found.

Besides uranium, there is thorium as well.

edpell

Astronuc, thanks. From these I get yearly production 43KT (1000 tones), yearly usage 65KT, reserve at current spot market price 5,500KT. So about 85 years at current rate of use. Current nuclear accounts for 6.5% of world energy per year. If we went say 65% nuclear we would have 8.5 years of reserve. Good thing we do not use much nuclear.

Yes, there is much more thorium I will look at that next.

edpell

Well I thought there was more thorium but I find 2.6x10^6 ton global reserve from
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/de...&terms=thorium
assuming a Kg of U and a Kg of Th are about the same energy yield I would say there is less Th(?). A point of interest is that about 2/3 of the thorium is in India. So from a global point of view there may not be lots of thorium but from an India point of view thorium looks great.