Humans will never run out of uranium.
Oh it gets better
https://spectrum.ieee.org/uranium-from-seawater
The cost to fuel a PWR is a very small part of the total cost of the energy sold depending on the country under 2% of total LCOE. we could double the cost of uranium and it wouldn’t add 5% to the total cost. Doubling the cost allows for two paths one is the reprocessing route that the French , Russians,Koreans and Chinese all chose. The other is to use seawater based uranium and just deep bore hole the whole waste stream in mile plus deep dry Granite. The Koreans already have costs of reprocessing down to within a few fractions of a cents per kWh. The benefit for reprocessing is the waste stream is only the 4% of spent fuel that actually is wastes the other 96% is still valuable fuel it should be a crime to throw that away but Jimmy the fool Carter cost the USA our leadership position in reprocessing we invested the dang process after all.
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/29/046/29046757.pdf
Since most wont download the PDF I will pull out the important part this is Koreans in the 1990s the economics are better now.
“All costs are expressed in constant dollars in the year of 1996.
Table-2 shows the results of economic comparison of MFC with UFC. As shown in
this table, levelized fuel cycle cost of MFC and UFC is 6.78 and 6.34 mills/kwh, respectively. Economic inferiority of MFC is mainly stemming from high reprocessing cost.
Sensitivity analyses were carried out to see the effects of the change in some critical input parameters such as uranium price, reprocessing, and MOX fabrication costs on the levelized fuel cycle costs. According to the sensitivity analysis, if the uranium price rises over $335/kgU(=$129/lb U3O8), MFC is economically more competitive than UFC. On the other hand, if MOX fabrication costs and reprocessing costs each fall by 20%”
The costs are 6.78 mills vs 6.34 mills per kWh. A mill is 1/1000 of a U.S. Dollar so tenths of cents.
What this shows is that the once through fuel cycle fuel cost for the uranium plus enrichment plus fabrication are 6.34 tenths of a U.S. Cent per kWh vs 6.78 tenths of a cent. This is how cheap nuclear fuel is, by far the cheapest form of thermal energy on the planet. Mind you th at nuclear power is at best 33% efficient. There is 3412 BTU to kWh, at 33% efficient it takes a heat rate of 10,339.39 BTU/kWh that cost 6.34 tenths of a U.S. Cent in fuel costs. 1 barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil produced in the United States = 5,691,000 Btu....at a cost of 6.34ths of a U.S. Cent for 10,400 btu worth of heat. 5.6E6/10339.39*0.00643=3.489 That’s equal to $3.489 per barrel of oil. Read that again, nuclear power is the cheapest form of thermal energy on the planet.
In dollar terms it is $0.00634 vs $0.00678 or a 44 hundredths of a cent per kWh difference. To reprocess spent fuel vs dumping it. This is how much that turd Carter screwed us. We could eliminate the waste issue forever for a few HUNDREDTHS of a cent increase in fuel costs F that guy from now to all eternity.