Uranium in Phosphate Rocks and Future Nuclear Power Fleets

According to almost all forward-looking studies, the world's energy consumption will increase in the future decades. The effort to contain global warming makes it hard to exclude nuclear energy from the global energy mix. Current Light Water Reactors (LWR) burn fissile uranium (a natural, finite resource), whereas some future Generation IV reactors, as Sodium fast reactors (SFR), starting with an initial fissile load, will be capable of recycling their own plutonium and already-extracted depleted uranium. This makes them a feasible solution for the sustainable (a few thousand years) development of nuclear energy. Nonetheless, a sufficient quantity of plutonium is needed to start up an SFR, with the plutonium already being produced in LWR. The availability of natural uranium therefore has a direct impact on the capacity of the reactors (both LWR and SFR) that we can build. This paper discusses the correspondence between the resources and the nuclear power demand as estimated by various international organizations. (author)