It isn't right. That 50 year figure comes up somewhere like the time that uranium left in current mines will last for if used for 100% of the current world power supply without reprocessing. It's wrong to use it for several reasons:
1) Reprocessing technologies to increase the efficiency of uranium exist. Although I believe currently the only facilities are in Europe and possibly Japan. The US thought they posed a proliferation risk.
2) Fuel can and is harvested from nuclear weapons which are no longer in use, and this isn't included in that 50 years.
3) Nuclear (fission) power does not necessarily equal uranium. Using other elements could take more research but it's definitely possible.
4) There are sources of uranium outside current mines. Nobody knows how much because nobody has really looked. It hasn't been worth looking because the market isn't big enough. This is partly due to the scale of nuclear power, and partly because mining is competing with gathering fuel from weapons. It is, however, pretty safe to say that there very significant reserves of uranium left untapped and if there is renewed interest in nuclear power someone will start mining. The real question is how much uranium is left in economically accessible areas, which is again unanswered but fuel costs are such a small part of the operating cost of a nuclear power station that they can easily absorb some fuel price increase.
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Originally Posted by Versus
Nuclear fusion really is the only way to support, as well as allow for growth, our society enough to use depleting fossil fuels into the future. But like I said, that's only half the problem.
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It isn't ready. The European tokamak in the UK, JET, isn't breaking even. It's at about 70% of power out over power in and I believe that's the current world record. Even that looks better than it is because the input power is only the heating, they haven't included the power needed to sustain the confinement fields. The US are researching a different fusion method but it hasn't really gone anywhere. There's an international tokamak being constructed in France as well as some other facilities elsewhere but it will be at least 20 or 30 years before it's finished and completed a significant amount of research. After that the idea is that it will be possible to create a demonstration fusion power station and it will be even longer before other stations are built. Even the most optimistic predictions I've seen have said 30 years from now (by doing things in parallel) and I wouldn't be surprised if the reality is 50+ years. So while fusion is worth supporting, there does need to be an interim solution.
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Originally Posted by Versus
Even so, each year, each reactor generates 25 tons of spent nuclear fuel that takes hundreds of years to become safe again.
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Not to diminish the dangers of nuclear waste, but 25 tons is probably a smaller number than you might imagine. 25 tons of uranium is only about a cubic metre or two, or 20 cubic metres according to Wiki so it probably has other things in it. I'm sure industry in general produces far more extremely dangerous non-radioactive waste than that, even if it isn't as dangerous or long lived. Nuclear waste is a huge problem but pointing out the negatives isn't enough to discount an energy source when none of the options are perfect. Without fusion or fossil fuels I can't really see what options some places would have for their baseload energy besides fission.
And while the decline of petroleum is going to be a huge problem and it would be best to start doing something about it, I don't think anyone is predicting end times yet. So it seems silly to talk about how this is going to cause world food shortages and a revolution.
