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Originally Posted by HoLangZai  2)Also the earth has a massive stockpile of Uranium. And the best part about Uranium is it can produce so much energy from a small amount of it. |
a) The uranium that can be recovered at current costs will last about 40 years.
b) To get 20% of the energy usage out of nuclear power plants by 2050, you need to build about 1,000 of them until then. Currently there are about 450-700 available worldwide. (these numbers might vary, for the correct ones check the DOE website) If you have more power plants you need more fuel.
c) If you take all known energy reserves and resources (oil, coal, gas, uranium), convert them into energy that can be generated from it.
Then take the whole energy consumption worldwide today and relate these figures (use an excel sheet).
Then take into account economic growth.
And take into account that some countries like China and India grow a bit faster than others.
As a result you will get something like 40-80 years within which currently known resources can be used.
If you calculate an average per head energy use that is the same as in the US, resources will be depleted faster.
You can also factor in population growth or a different per head consumption. And you can factor in MOX-technology for nuclear power plants, which extends uranium availability by a factor 60, but you will see that it doesn't really change much in the result.
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If you create heat energy on earth, you need to be able to lose the heat into the universe, otherwise it will get hot here. Common green house gases are CO2, water vapor and methane.