Is nuclear power a sustainable energy source?

Fission, no. Finite uranium resources.
Fusion however, yes.

There is plenty of uranium. The problem is disposing of the waste, not obtaining fuel.

@dpworkin
According to this
we are talking about mere decades until our reserves are depleted with the current number of operated reactors. It will run out in a similar time frame as fossil fuels.

@ragingloli Thanks, I learned something.

Yeah, thanks @ragingloli.

I was finding only industry groups, claiming uranium is virtually limitless. An industry group saying its finite is more credible.

Bill Gates is backing a company which wants to build reactors which run off low-level fuel – depleted uranium (the waste from other reactors) and even U-238, which is the common naturally-occurring uranium. This would make the available reserves stretch much farther into the future.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22114/

Existing technology reactors are an acceptable energy source so long as we can safely and permanently store the spent fuel.

While we have good supplies of Uranium, since it is not renewable, it is not sustainable.
Since the waste lasts almost forever, it is not a perfect solution but it is a better interim solution for producing electricity than burning coal or oil.

Future nuclear technologies like controlled fusion would be much better but we may not develop it soon enough.

We need to use renewable sources like hydroelectric, solar and wind and eliminate our dependence on burning coal and oil.

Our governments are still controlled by the auto industry and the traditional energy producers. If that were not true, we would have an established end date for the production and importation of fossil fuels and vehicles that depend on such fuels.

Until we HAVE TO switch to renewable sources of energy, we will drag our feet until our cars can’t be used and we all can hardly breath!

I think with fusion you can use the waste of fission as a fuel. Which brings down the waste to a tiny fraction – and you can also use that waste as a fuel.

Bill Gate’s most recent TED talk is pretty relevant (as mentioned by @jaytkay).

A few points:
* Uranium isn’t the only fuel source for nuclear power (there’s others like thorium)
* Spent fuel can potentially be reused using newer reactor technology
* Fusion doesn’t use spent fissile material, it uses hydrogen to create helium

I’m slightly skeptical of “running out of uranium”, aren’t we running out of coal and oil before then?

The nukes that we have are not sustainable since they produce quantities of plutonium, which has a half life of 25,000 years. We have just not found a place to plop this stuff, no one wants it, it kills everything around (see the Hanford reservation in WA state), and it kills people who come in contact. So, when they say nukes are just fine (if they don’t melt down) they seem to forget about the plutonium. If there is another kind of nuke that is different, well, that may be a different story—but this is what we have going now, and it is bad stuff. Maybe a different nuke will be more sustainable.

@timtrueman cheers, that’s what I was talking about actually. But I don’t know my nuclear stuff very well in terminology. Only in concepts.

@skfinkel Unless we use something like a CANDU reactor which can use that Plutonium as fuel, or just “incinerate” it into less harmful stuff that has a half-life of closer to 400 years.
The catch there is that CANDU is a different type of reactor than most of the reactors we currently have. That means building more power plants; something that is no politically possible.

The way I see it, the Sun will eventually exhaust it’s fuel supply, so nothing is truly sustainable.

Another interesting TED talk that’s very relevant to this discussion: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_cowley_fusion_is_energy_s_future.html

It looks at fusion which is the most sustainable form of nuclear power generation (once we develop the technology a bit more—we’ve already done fusion, but it’s got a long way to go before it’s ready for commercialization).

Also, while U-235 is rare, tehre is enough U-238 for quite a while, more than long enough for us to get the hang of fusion, and possibly depending on who you listen to long enough to watch old Sol go red-giant on our ass.