Wikipedia View of "Peak" Uranium

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Exploration, Mining, Marketing, & Acquisitions

[Wikipedia view introduced by an adversarial perspective designed to perpetuate fears of limited supplies of uranium, which like the concept of "peak" oil has been shown to be incorrect. Why? Because exploration has to date found more and more of such resources. Same with uranium. Look for subtle uncertainties].

"Peak uranium is the point in time that the maximum global uranium production rate is reached. After that peak, according to Hubbert peak theory [discounted since introduced], the rate of production enters a terminal decline. While uranium is used in nuclear weapons, its primary use is for energy generation via nuclear fission of the uranium-235 isotope in a nuclear power reactor. Each kilogram of uranium-235 fissioned releases the energy equivalent of millions of times its mass in chemical reactants, as much energy as 2700 tons of coal, but uranium-235 is only 0.7% of the mass of natural uranium. Uranium-235 is a finite non-renewable resource.

Advances in breeder reactor technology could allow the current reserves of uranium to provide power for humanity for billions of years, thus making nuclear power a sustainable energy. However, in 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries." But in 2016, the Russian BN-800 fast-neutron breeder reactor started producing commercially at full power (800 MWe), replacing the previous BN-600. As of 2020, the Chinese CFR-600 is under construction after the success of the China Experimental Fast Reactor, based on the BN-800. These reactors are currently generating mostly electricity rather than new fuel because the abundance and low price of mined and reprocessed uranium oxide makes breeding uneconomical, but they can switch to breed new fuel and close the cycle as needed.

M. King Hubbert created his peak theory in 1956 for a variety of finite resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. He and others since have argued that if the nuclear fuel cycle can be closed, uranium could become equivalent to renewable energy sources as concerns its availability. Breeding and nuclear reprocessing potentially would allow the extraction of the largest amount of energy from natural uranium. However, only a small amount of uranium is currently being bred into plutonium and only a small amount of fissile uranium and plutonium is being recovered from nuclear waste worldwide. Furthermore, the technologies to completely eliminate the waste in the nuclear fuel cycle do not yet exist. Since the nuclear fuel cycle is effectively not closed, Hubbert peak theory may be applicable.[but later discounted]

Pessimistic predictions of future high-grade uranium production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred in the 1980s or that a second peak may occur sometime around 2035....?

At the start of 2015, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 5.7 million tons. At the rate of consumption in 2014, these reserves are sufficient for 135 years of supply. The identified reserves as of 2015 recoverable at US$260/kg are 7.6 million tons.

Optimistic predictions of nuclear fuel supply are based upon on one of three possible scenarios. Neither is currently commercially viable as more than 80% of the World's reactors are LWR's:

Light Water Reactors only consume about half of one percent of their uranium fuel while fast breeder reactors will consume closer to 99%, current reserves of U are about 5.3 million tons. Theoretically 4.5 billion tons of uranium are available from sea water at about 10 times the current price of uranium. Currently, no practical methods for high volume extraction exist. thorium (3–4 times as abundant as uranium) might be used when supplies of uranium are depleted. However, in 2010, the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) concluded that for the short to medium term, "...the thorium fuel cycle does not currently have a role to play," in that it is "technically immature, and would require a significant financial investment and risk without clear benefits," and concluded that the benefits have been "overstated."
If these predictions became reality it has the potential to increase the supply of nuclear fuel significantly. Currently, despite decades of research, there are no commercially practical Thorium reactors in operation.

Optimistic predictions claim that the supply is far more than demand and do not predict peak uranium.....look at all the discoveries just over the past 10 years (here).