Nuclear Energy is Abundant

Developing countries tend to stress the importance of measures to reduce our energy consumption, or at least decorrelate economic growth from energy consumption growth. These initiatives, which tend towards more sobriety, should obviously be celebrated. Our consumption patterns are horrendous, and we have a significant margin for improvement—whether it is by reducing red meat consumption, insulating buildings, or improving public transport infrastructures.

Counter-intuitively, this doesn’t emancipate us from seeking energy abundance. There is clear evidence that electricity consumption is correlated with higher development and human welfare indicators, up to a certain point where it flattens out. [49] Countries like Eritrea, India or Nepal all have a particularly low development index score, around or below 0.6. [50] Coincidentally, they also have an annual per capita electricity consumption well below 1,000 kWh. [51] In this range of countries, an increase in electricity consumption per capita translates relatively well into an improvement of human development. Simply put, guaranteeing services such as widespread and affordable education and healthcare requires energy. The optimum appears around 6,000 kWh annually per capita, around the level of countries like the Netherlands or Ireland which are in the top 10 of countries with the highest development index. Above that, more electrical consumption does not further improve human development index.

Needless to say that a large fraction of the globe does not live in the same conditions as the Netherlands or Ireland. We can only hope that, in the coming decades, they will get there. In parallel, experts expect the world population to keep on increasing and reach a plateau around 10 billion people. [52] The conjunction of these two trends will tremendously increase global energy consumption. The US Energy Information Administration projects a nearly 50% increase by 2050, mostly driven by non-OECD countries. [53]

Clearly, we need abundant energy. What are the prospects offered by nuclear energy? We have already learnt that nuclear reactors, once built, can be operated for decades, if not a whole century. There is a clear ambition, at the global level, to build as much as we possibly can.

What is then the constraint in terms of fuel?

Figure extracted from the IAEA and OECD NEA “Uranium Resources, Production and Demand (Red Book)” report, published in April 2023. Eventhought this is only a partial picture, there is clearly a lot of uranium out there.

Despite very little exploration efforts, there are 8 million tons of recoverable uranium, which is enough to power at least the next 135 years at the current rate of consumption. Over a quarter is found in Australia. The next three largest deposits are found respectively in Kazakhstan, Canada, in Russia. The remaining 40% is spread across the globe. Clearly, this is a healthy geographical distribution.

However, we have only scratched the surface of what’s available. According to the Uranium Red Book, edited by the IAEA and OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), "given the limited maturity and geographical coverage of uranium exploration worldwide, there is considerable potential for the discovery of new resources of economic interest. As clearly demonstrated in the last few years, with appropriate market signals, new uranium resources can be readily identified and mined." [54] In summer 2023, the Swedish Parliament gave another example of these moving market dynamics by supporting a lift on the ban on uranium mining. This represents 80% of the European Union’s uranium deposits, now open for extraction. [55]

In parallel, technologies are maturing to use fuel more efficiently in fast reactors, which we already encountered earlier, providing up to 1,000 more years of energy. We could also exploit the 38 million tons of unconventional deposits, or recover the billions of tons present in seawater. It costs around twice to six times as much to retrieve as mined uranium, which is significant but not prohibitive. [56] In any case, fuel constitutes less than 15% of the final cost of nuclear energy. [57]

If that is not enough, we can also switch to thorium, which is over three times more abundant. [58] The decision to focus on uranium instead of thorium has its historical roots in the 70’s and has been deemed an "an excusable mistake". [59]

Truly, there is no limit in sight.

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