Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "America's Nuclear Supply Chain (Ditching Russian Uranium) || Peter Zeihan" video.

True, but that's also fissile and the excess nuclear weapons plutonium has been diluted into fuel for civilian reactors.
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It's a 2 year supply plus on average slightly under a year's worth loaded in operational reactors. Military HEU designs have longer refueling intervals.
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@calc1657 "yet we've given them 100s of billions of dollars in aid--far more than any other country" You actually haven't, yet. You promised to safeguard Ukraine's borders if Ukraine did your bidding and gave up its nuclear weapons.
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In fact, it requires quite little energy/work to raise the enrichment level further. There is higher enrichment used in research/prototype reactors and medical reactors and military reactors (esp naval). Higher enrichment makes for higher burnup, longer fuel life and smaller reactors.
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There's not.
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It's not the uranium that's the problem, that's geostrategically well distributed. It's the enrichment capacity and fuel fabrication plants.
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@Withnail1969 if better ores are exhausted or embargoed, then the previously crappy ores become good ores. And again, uranium is geostrategically well distributed, and it's very cheap fuel so we can absorb price hikes without being significantly hurt.
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It's THE solution though.
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@LoneWolf-wp9dn I don't see that many practical issues. Blaze a trail through the red tape and build. Almost all the globe's electricity is generated in countries that can easily build. (15 countries are building right now.)
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@LoneWolf-wp9dn China has built 6 reactors of the Hualong One design and has another 11 under construction. Of course it's hard to standardize when we don't build, but whenever we build appreciable numbers, then a number of them will be essentially the same (while evolving slightly to become increasingly economical to build as we learn). I fully agree that we're not there in terms of series production and momentum, but the tech is available and remains the best solution. Yes, the current US model is fracked gas with intermittent RE fuel extenders, and I guess that's fine also in a sense. Not sure it'll fly in China and Europe though.
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@LoneWolf-wp9dn I think that's a natural conclusion to draw in a way, especially considering the allure of fuel breeding, breaking away from the dependency on the seemingly scarce U235 and potentially reducing waste volumes. However, waiting for innovations and tech silver bullets defies both history, where nuclear construction was cheap before supply chains were destroyed, and the conclusions that should be drawn from e.g. solar and wind cost curves. The problem isn't a lack of tech, the problem is a lack of volumes. It's a Catch 22 that can be resolved by any of: 1. Determined build programmes/incentives by governments (like for solar and wind). 2. Deep cuts in red tape to unleash private construction. 3. Hoping that one or two SMRs will slowly get some traction and blaze a trail through regulation and slowly start accumulating volumes and thus cost reductions. China is the only one doing 1 currently, but others like France may be about to start. None are doing 2. Most of the rest are doing 3.
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It's easy for Australia to take an all-of-the-above approach. It has enough uranium for both any domestic purposes and exports.
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@calc1657 Ukraine support tracker has the US at 67 billion euro in support before the additional 61 billion usd funding was announced, and fairly little of the latter has been disbursed. So it's still under 100 billion dollars in total US aid, not 100s. The Budapest Memorandum is a formal signed agreement based on long negotiations. The we-will-not-expand-NATO promise is doubtful if it was ever given, but if it was, it was an oral promise by one US administration given to the Soviets, and neither that US administration nor the Soviets are around anymore.
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BobV-nk1yq the next US election seems extremely important, and you have the two-party system you have. As a Swede, I sincerely hope Americans who value democracy and world stability will hold their noses if needed and vote for Biden.
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@calc1657 is it so hard to admit error? The disbursed amount is far less than 100, so the statement "we've given them 100s of billions" is wrong. I replied "you actually haven't, yet", and got the reply "we actually have". So this is a now a lie that you refuse to step back from. Why? One can split hairs over it, but the US was the driving force in convincing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of territorial integrity. To me, that creates a clear moral obligation to assist. It's also in the US geopolitical interest to do so. Feel free to refuse here too, then let's just agree we have a very different sense of honor, obligation and duty, among other things.
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@calc1657 again, the disbursed amount is far less than 100. Hard to acknowledge error? The US was the driving force in convincing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of territorial integrity. That creates a clear moral obligation to assist. It's also in the US geopolitical interest to do so. Let's perhaps agree that we have a very different sense of honor, obligation and duty?
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It's not about the mining, that's not reliant on Russia. It's about enrichment and fuel fabrication, primarily.
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The reason the Paducah plant in KY drew so much energy was that it was based on old gaseous diffusion tech that requires 50x more energy per SWU than newer centrifuge tech. To serve the entire US reactor fleet with fuel, an 80 MW centrifuge plant would suffice. So make 4x40 MW geographically distributed plants to have redundancy, ability to help allies, ability to increase fuel stockpiles, and some capacity for re-enriching old tailings. 160 MW continuous power is all that's needed for that.
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@Bayard1503 France has considerable enrichment capacity, so I don't think Europe is at 90%. As Zeihan says, we can easily build enrichment capacity in both the US and Europe, so it's kindof infuriating that we haven't and are slow to do so. We need to ensure strategic self-sufficiency in many areas and this is one of them.
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@LoganChristianson all nuclear bombs rely on plutonium or uranium. Hydrogen bombs are staged devices where the first stage is a plutonium fission explosion that then lights up a plutonium spark plug that then starts the hydrogen fusion. Then there's usually a casing of additional uranium that contributes significantly to the yield.
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The breakdown of enrichment capacity is this (2020): 46% Russia 23% Germany-Netherlands-UK 12% France 10% China 8% USA The nuclear electricity generation breakdown looks like this: 34% North America 28% Europe 16% China 12% Asia except China 9% CIS (Russia mainly) So if you match this, you'll see that Europe has more enrichment capacity than needed. China is closing the gap. While North America and Japan/South Korea has too little. So basically Japan and South Korea should collaborate on enrichment, and the US should up its game. Then most of Russia's capacity will be unused as it has 5x more than needed domestically.
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