In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy strategies of the United States and certain European countries.
1kg of lithium produces about 10kWh of storage for 15-20 years. 3-12 hours of storage is plenty for a >95% VRE grid.
1kg of uranium produces about 750W for 6 years.
There are about 20 million tonnes of conventional lithium economically accessible reserves (and it has only been of economic interest for a short time).
There are about 10 million tonnes of reasonably assured accessible uranium (not reserves, stuff assumed to exist). It has had many boom/bust cycles of prospecting.
Lithium batteries are not even being proposed as the main grid storage method.
Cobalt is the difficult one, especially with the child workers mining it.
Cobalt isn’t even in most EV batteries anymore, and LMFP is replacing NMC next year.
Sodium ion will then replace LFP the year after.
It’s also real weird how people only ever care about french colonial exploitation of africa when it comes to materials they pretend are in renewables and not when they’re flooding villages drinking water with uranium tailings.