Nuclear perspectives at exhausting trends of traditional energy resources

For the first time the analytical relationship was established between the nuclear energy generation worldwide and supply of NPPs with natural uranium, as conventional resources are expected to deplete by the end of this century. Forecast results include the dynamics of a potential increased shortage of conventional energy resources, such as hydrocarbon fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and natural uranium, in the course of time due to a growing energy demand (at the rate of 1 to 2% per year), on the one hand, and the depletion of nonrenewable resources, on the other hand. The forecast is based on the current geological data on extractable hydrocarbon and uranium resources, and a mathematical model for the dynamics of nonrenewable resources production. The forecast shows that, with the present-day paradigm of handling the produced conventional energy sources, the reserves of these will be significantly depleted by the end of this century, and their production peaks are expected to be reached by the mid-century. In the event of state-of-art NPP designs, the dynamics of the installed capacity will follow the dynamics of the natural uranium depletion, and the NPP contribution to the supply of energy for the needs of humankind will go down while increasing at the same time the total shortage of conventional energy sources. By 2100, however, the contribution of nuclear power (based on thermal neutrons) to primary sources may reach 10%, since hydrocarbons will be depleted at a higher rate than uranium. Meanwhile, this amount of nuclear energy will be negligible, as compared to the demand for primary energy, after the 2040s even at the smallest possible rate of growth in demand (1%/year). A growing spread between the increasing energy demand and the decreasing supply of exhaustible conventional energy resources necessitates the evolution of nuclear fuel breeding (breeding of ²³⁹Pu from ²³⁸U and, possibly, ²³³U from ²³²Th) no later than the 2030s.