What about Thorium? A back of the envelope calculation suggests thorium reactors could supply us with energy 100-500 years. I got this from a few sources. First used the figure of the 170 GW days produced per metric tonne of fuel (Fort St Vrain HTR) and the availability of fuel (500-2500 ktonnes according to Wikipedia) to estimate 10-50 years out of Thorium reactors if we keep using 15TW of energy. And that’s not even accounting for breeding reactors, which can produce their own fuel. So if we do go with the theoretical maximum, then we should multiply this figure by 50. I’m basing that estimate of the (probably peak) fuel efficiency of Thorium from what Carlo Rubia of Cern said (see Wikipedia article above). That is, 1 tonne can provide 200 times more power than 1 tonne of Uranium. Since Uranium produces ~45 GW days per metric tonne of fuel, we get the estimae of 50 times. Then we get the figure of 500-2500 15TW years.
Supposing that we really need four or five times the amount of energy we actually use, leaves us with an upper bound of ten times the naive estimate. So I’d estimate thorium could provide 100-500 75TW years.
What about Thorium? A back of the envelope calculation suggests thorium reactors could supply us with energy 100-500 years. I got this from a few sources. First used the figure of the 170 GW days produced per metric tonne of fuel (Fort St Vrain HTR) and the availability of fuel (500-2500 ktonnes according to Wikipedia) to estimate 10-50 years out of Thorium reactors if we keep using 15TW of energy. And that’s not even accounting for breeding reactors, which can produce their own fuel. So if we do go with the theoretical maximum, then we should multiply this figure by 50. I’m basing that estimate of the (probably peak) fuel efficiency of Thorium from what Carlo Rubia of Cern said (see Wikipedia article above). That is, 1 tonne can provide 200 times more power than 1 tonne of Uranium. Since Uranium produces ~45 GW days per metric tonne of fuel, we get the estimae of 50 times. Then we get the figure of 500-2500 15TW years.
Supposing that we really need four or five times the amount of energy we actually use, leaves us with an upper bound of ten times the naive estimate. So I’d estimate thorium could provide 100-500 75TW years.