Reply #36: Critical thinking doesn't come easy to you does it. [View All]

[Statistical]

The OP deals with total lifecycle but makes the claim that YIELD will raise that total lifecycle to higher than natural gas.

Uranium lifecycle
1) Mining/Extraction
2) Milling
3) Conversion
4) Enrichment
5) Fuel Fabrication
6) Reactor construction & decommissioning
7) Fission in reactor (power generation)
8) Spent fuel storage

The OP deals with uranium yields falling. The only CO2 costs that falling uranium yields affect are #1 & #2.

The output of step #2 is "yellowcake" which is 100% uranium oxide.

So falling yields will increase energy/CO2 costs of steps #1 & #2.

However falling uranium yields won't make fuel fabrication require more energy nor will it make reactor construction require more energy.

Mudd numbers show the CO2/energy costs for uranium to be a tiny fraction of those claimed by the OP.