“Coal. Cheaper, ready, abundant. By all means, do nukes too. But the silliness blocking the most economical fuel there is, is all unjustified luddite nonsense, to the bottom.”
From the article: When an atom splits in two—which happens occasionally in nature and can be induced in a nuclear reactor—some binding energy is liberated. This energy release is two million times greater than any “chemical” releases that come in, say, an internal combustion engine or a coal-fired electrical generating plant. This 2-million differential explains why a 1,000-megawatt coal plant must be fed by a 110-car train loaded with 16,000 tons of coal arriving every day. Meanwhile a nuclear reactor of the same size is fed by a single flatbed truck that arrives with a new set of fuel rods once every 18 months. The energy stored in the nucleus of the atom is almost incomprehensibly larger than the energy stored in fossil fuels or the kinetic activity of wind, wave, or water.
We have enough to last about 500 years. Seriously.
Energy from coal is a simple linear equation while E=mc2, c being the speed of light squared tends to inflate the amount of energy derived from a very small mass.
But that single flatbed truck hauling uranium required raw ore on par with that daily 110-car train load. There may be a 2,000,000:1 ratio of energy release, but it’s about two million times easier to mine & burn coal than mine & refine & split uranium.