7. Replacing Natural Gas in a Gas–Gas Engine with Nuclear Fuel

Building nuclear power is absolutely necessary for a number of reasons. (1) Nuclear power is a carbon-free source of electricity. It does not emit dust, sulfur compounds, nitrogen and carbon dioxide at all. It is therefore environmentally friendly. (2) Throughout the year it provides consumers with a stable supply of electricity, without which modern civilization could not exist. The annual use of nuclear power plants’ capacity exceeds 8,000 h. Moreover, and what is extremely important, the nuclear fuel: uranium, plutonium and thorium will last for many hundreds of years, while coal and gas resources are depleting at an increasing pace. Moreover, after the introduction of a closed fuel cycle with multiple use of nuclear fuel (the so-called nuclear reprocessing), it will be enough for tens of thousands of years. In addition, there are over 4 billion tons of uranium dissolved in seawater, and its technical extraction is under control. Nuclear fuel will therefore last for billions of years. (3) Long, 60-year, lifetime of nuclear power plants. (4) The cost of electricity from nuclear power plants is relatively low, especially after their depreciation—Fig. 5.​2. (5) Moreover, the cost of nuclear fuel amounts to merely 5% of the annual operating costs of nuclear power plants.