This is only the reserves - that is in deposits that are being currently mined and even those assume that the fuel is wastefully used, i.e. not reprocessed. By wasteful use, I mean that only 15% of the uranium is used before the rods are withdrawn, but the current practice is to regard these as waste. Reprocessing can retrieve this unburnt fuel for use. This gives an additional 5 times as much energy from the same amount of metal.I can expand on this but this is not an appropriate forum.
There are vast other resources that are undeveloped for various reasons, mainly political, largely due to the lies told by groups such as Greenpeace that have scared politicans and the public. In addition there are untested finds.
Did you know that it is illegal to explore for uranium in several states. There are known deposits that have been found when exploring for other metals, but where the uranium must be dispersed in the waste if the other metal is mined. The actual amount of metal is vast.
Did you know that Australian coal is 2-3ppm Uranium. There is more energy available in the Uranium than there is in burning the coal.
Thorium can also be used as reactor fuel and is abundant.
As for keeping the fuel rods away from water - water is the safest place to store the rods as it absorbs the radiation till the short half life isotopes have decayed to safe levels prior to reprocessing about 20 years after withdrawl from the reactor.
The radiation levels of SYNROC is similar to the radiation levels of coal power station ash, but as the ash has not come from a reactor the radiation levels are ignored.
Taking all this in account I still believe that the development of Hot Rock Geothermal is still preferable.
The reason that Fellowes has not found Geothermal carbon values is that GDY's project is the World Prototype for this energy source. None of the overseas applications are comparable as most do not have a closed cycle. Figures from them would not be comparable to GDY.
Regards
RB
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