Dr. Conca opines that nuclear power is presently a sustainable energy source, but could become completely renewable if the source of uranium changed from mined ore to seawater. Since U extracted is continuously replenished through geologic processes, nuclear would become as endless as solar. But do renewable and sustainable mean the same thing in the energy world? Not necessarily. As Professor Jason Donev from the University of Calgary puts it, not everything renewable is sustainable, and in turn not everything which is sustainable is necessarily renewable. Renewable literally means ..to make new again. Any resource that naturally replenishes with time, like the creation of wind or the growth of biological organisms for biomass or biofuels, is certainly renewable.
Renewable energy means that the energy humans extract from nature will generally replace itself. On the other hand, a sustainable energy source can be maintained for a definable period of time, one whose total amount will last for the period of human history that needs it, at the rate it is being used or expected to be used.
It may or may not be renewed at some rate. Human energy use is dominated by a small list of primary energy types, of which the following sources are considered to be renewable: Solar power, Wind power, Hydropower, Tidal power and Geothermal energy. But a non-renewable resource can be sustainable if it is used at a slow enough rate that supplies last for thousands of years, and the environmental impacts do not cause huge problems. This is most obvious with respect to nuclear power. Like fossil fuel, the amount of uranium available from conventional sources has long been underestimated. Reserves are only calculated for economically recoverable sources using present-day technologies and pricing. New uranium deposits are being discovered. Better yet, the advanced nuclear reactors that will replace our existing reactors use much more of the available energy than the older designs.
Original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/24/is-nuclear-power-a-renewable-or-a-sustainable-energy-source/#67b05ac656e7
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