The myth
"Uranium is a finite resource. At current consumption rates, it will run out in a hundred years. Nuclear energy is therefore not a sustainable solution."
This is the standard narrative of organisations such as WISE Netherlands. It sounds logical. It is also incorrect — based on a misunderstanding of what "proven reserves" means, and on complete ignorance of the physics of nuclear fission.
The facts
The milk in your fridge
The e-Lise Foundation uses an apt analogy: "proven reserves" of uranium are like the milk in your fridge. A family with growing children needs ever more milk. When the fridge runs empty, you go to the supermarket. When the supermarket runs empty, you order from the farmer.
This is how it works with uranium too. "Proven reserves" are not the total amount of uranium on earth — it is the amount that is economically recoverable at current prices and that companies have taken the trouble to look for. At higher prices, mining companies search harder, new deposits are opened up, and previously uneconomic deposits suddenly become viable.
This is not theory — it is precisely what has happened throughout the history of every raw material. The "proven reserves" of uranium have consistently risen over the past fifty years, despite increasing consumption.
| Source | Quantity | Supply at current consumption |
|---|---|---|
| Proven reserves (conventional mining) | ~6.1 million tonnes | ~100 years |
| Estimated additional reserves | ~10 million tonnes | ~160 years |
| Phosphate deposits | ~22 million tonnes | ~350 years |
| Seawater | ~4,500 million tonnes | ~70,000 years |
And that is with current reactors that utilise only ~1% of the energy content of uranium. With advanced reactors, these figures shift by a factor of 100.
| Scenario | Supply |
|---|---|
| Current reactors + mines | ~100 years |
| Current reactors + seawater | ~70,000 years |
| Breeder reactors + mines | ~10,000 years |
| Breeder reactors + seawater | ~7 million years |
David MacKay, the British mathematician and author of Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, calculated that fast reactors combined with uranium from seawater can deliver 420 kWh per day per person — more than sufficient for the entire world population. It is the only energy option in his book that he qualifies as truly "sustainable" on the basis of both capacity and fuel supply. Not for a century. For millions of years.
| Given | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual electricity consumption of the Netherlands | ~120 TWh |
| Potential from COVRA stockpile | ~1,700,000 TWh |
| Equivalent supply | ~14,000 years of Dutch electricity consumption |
We are throwing fuel away. Fourteen thousand years' worth of electricity sits in a building in Zeeland, waiting for reactors we refuse to build.
!The sugar cube experiment
One kilogram of uranium contains as much energy as approximately 14,000 kilograms of coal (with breeder reactors: 1.4 million kilograms). A piece of uranium the size of a sugar cube contains enough energy to supply one person with electricity for an entire lifetime. Jan Rhebergen uses the same analogy in his LinkedIn article "Join the Team!": dissolving a sugar cube in tea is simple — but extracting the sugar again costs enormous amounts of energy. Renewable energy is that dissolved sugar: everywhere, but diffuse. Uranium is the cube: compact, concentrated, directly usable. (link) No other energy source comes even close to this energy density. It is not even a contest.
| Resource | Application | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Lithium | Batteries | Extraction consumes 2 million litres of water per tonne; ecological devastation in Chile and Argentina |
| Cobalt | Batteries | 70% comes from Congo; documented child labour and fatal mining accidents |
| Neodymium | Wind turbines | Extraction in China causes radioactive wastewater and devastated landscapes |
| Silver | Solar panels | Limited reserves; competition with industrial applications |
| Copper | Everything | IEA warns of shortages under large-scale electrification |
For most of these resources, there is no equivalent of uranium's "seawater extraction." Lithium is also dissolved in seawater (~180 billion tonnes), and research into extracting it is ongoing — ironically, co-extraction with uranium from seawater could reduce the costs. But for cobalt, neodymium and silver, there is no ocean as a backstop. The scarcity is real, the extraction is destructive, and the technological escape routes are limited.
A world that is becoming less radioactive
The e-Lise Foundation notes: "Ironically, thanks to our use of uranium, the world is gradually becoming a little less radioactive." Every time we fission uranium, we convert a radioactive atom into fission products that decay more rapidly. We accelerate the natural decay process. Nuclear energy literally makes the earth less radioactive.
Conclusion
The claim that "uranium is running out" rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between proven reserves and physical availability. With conventional mining, there is supply for well over a century. With uranium from seawater — which China can now extract at near-competitive cost — for tens of thousands of years. With breeder reactors that extract 100 times more energy from the same fuel: for millions of years. And at COVRA, enough depleted uranium for 14,000 years of Dutch electricity consumption already sits there, with the absurdity that we call it "waste".
Uranium does not run out. It is the most concentrated, most abundant and most sustainable energy source available to humanity. The resources that are running out — lithium, cobalt, rare earths — are precisely the resources needed for the technologies intended to replace nuclear energy.
Sources
- World Nuclear Association, "Supply of Uranium" (2024) (link)
- Tamada, M. et al., "Cost estimation of uranium recovery from seawater," Nuclear Technology (link)
- MacKay, D. (2009), Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, UIT Cambridge (link)
- OECD-NEA/IAEA, Uranium: Resources, Production and Demand (Red Book, 2023) (link)
- Clean Power for All / Stichting e-Lise (link)
