In what way would you regard nuclear as renewable? It is fuelled by finite stocks, the extraction and refining of which are completely dependent on fossil fuels as a base.
I don't see how it could be classified as "renewable," but I'd argue the more relevant terms would be "clean" or "sustainable."
"Renewable" makes you think of "some of this stuff is going to run out!" which is all wrong. Sure, oil and coal and gas are finite, but if we actually burn through a good chunk of the reserves, the emissions will totally screw us long before we actually run out of stuff to burn. The problem with fossil fuels isn't their finiteness, it's the long-term effects of their use on the planet. If there were an infinite supply they would still be just as bad.
Alternatives are clean, in that they don't emit nearly as much harmful stuff, and they're sustainable, in that they can keep being used for centuries without massive ill effects. Nuclear fits into that just fine, even though it's not really renewable.
Uranium is available in seawater in virtually limitless quantity (for all practical intents and purposes), so nuclear power should be considered renewable.
Uranium is available in seawater in virtually limitless quantity...
So is gold, which is back up over US$1200/oz, while the spot price on U3O8 is US$39.50/pound. If it isn't economically viable to extract Au from seawater, it's certainly not for U.
Actually, nuclear is not generally regarded as renewable energy by definition [0].
I can somewhat see the reason (of course, it's arguable) in the fact that there is some identification of renewable sources of energy with their "cleanness".
But how can you call solar power 'renewable'? It's powered by fusion reactions in the sun, which are finite; it's going to run out.
Only partly tongue-in-cheek. Fission power will also last hundreds of millions of years, so although it is "non-renewable", it shouldn't carry the same connotations of "will therefore run out".
One of the non-renewable aspects of Nuclear power is the storage of nuclear waste, which has specific geological requirements which are not easy to satisfy in many parts of the world.
I expect that's a more limiting factor than the availability of nuclear fuel, but I could be wrong.
It has specific political requirements that are not easy to satisfy in many parts of the world. We can do it technically, it's just that no one is happy about having a nuclear waste dump in their backyard.
My understanding is that this is a difficult technical challenge and an active area of research. It is difficult to predict which geological structures on Earth will be stable and inaccessible by life forms or geologic volatility on timescales > 10,000 years.
I'm not an expert in this area, just that we spent considerable time discussing the challenges in some earth science courses I took, but that was several years ago. So if you have some good review sources to suggest, that would be helpful.
