Moreover many materials used in 'renewables' equipment (wind turbines...) are eternally (at human scale) recyclable. This reduces the need for mining.

Uranium has to be mined.

On site mini reactors with directly wired machinery isn’t entirely inconceivable but would require a massive restructuring of industrial layouts and processes.

SMRs are being touted now, but (1) they aren't that small, and (2) they have to be grouped together or else fixed labor costs become unacceptable per unit of power output. The result is a collection whose power output isn't too different from conventional large reactors.

I agree it’s unlikely but by the same token renewables don’t really solve this problem any better - at the end of the day you need batteries for both.

Renewables scale down much better than nuclear does, particularly PV. For that matter, so do batteries.

I note that your polemic is long on faith in nuclear but short on the same sources you’re demanding. Perhaps you could model the standard you expect from other people by providing sources and some analysis of the very sweeping assertions you’re making.

A typical game for making EROEI look bad is to expand system boundaries. That is, you say "we're paying these workers, and they're consuming products and services that use energy, so ascribe that energy use to this effort". Cast the net widely enough and all energy use in society can be included. But if you do that, EROEI converges to 1, since all energy that is produced is also consumed. And this is perfectly ok.

Elsewhere, with more reasonable boundaries, one finds EROEI is much higher, and has been found to be better than for fossil fuels. An EROEI of about 8 for PV in Switzerland, for example (and Switzerland is not the sunniest place on Earth; the EROEI would be even higher at those locations; it also becomes higher as renewable technology advances, for example with longer lifespans and thinner PV cells.)

That EROEI can't be bad should be obvious. Energy is only a small fraction of the cost of making renewable equipment. If EROEI were bad then renewables could not be as cheap as they are. That they are being sold so cheaply debunks the EROEI arguments directly.

It's certainly the case that China has been burning a lot of coal. But that doesn't mean China's PV depends on the existence of coal power to produce it. The objection here seems to be that a renewable economy is impossible because it hasn't sprung into existence fully formed.

And isn't coal responsible for all that concrete nuclear plants there are built with? The vision of a nuclear-powered world implicitly assumes concrete will produced in some other way; this is a harder task that replacing coal electricity with renewable electricity.

Where do you see a vision a nuclear powered world? No-one touts that. Look, if you have numbers, actual data, please provide it. So far all you provided pfdietz is sneer and words.

So, if the world isn't going to be nuclear powered, what is your alternative? Sticking to fossil fuels until we're in Permian-Triassic extinction 2, Electric Boogaloo?

If the world and industrial civilization are going to survive, it's either nuclear or renewables.

Why either-or? it's: (1) a lot of sobriety (2) any and all available technology with a well understood and well modelled risk/reward impact/scale plan

Also note that you seem to mean new-renewables (wind and solar) when you write "renewables". At this point and for a long time the large-scale and frequent renewables are hydropower and biomass, that are renewable, but are not new.

Well, my feeling it the exact mirror of that. It is you who I view as hopelessly wrong, someone who has cultish devotion to a failing technology.

What would a disinterested observer make of this?

They'd look for objective evidence to determine which of us is closer to reality.

For example, they might look at what the world is doing right now. What is being installed, renewables or nuclear? Presumably those who are spending money are trying to get the most bang for the buck.

If we look at that, renewables are soundly trouncing nuclear. Even in China, that country that is held up as the last best hope by nuclear advocates. New installs (which reflect the current conditions better than total installed capacity, which is a lagging indicator) are massively in favor of renewables there and elsewhere.

The nuclear advocate who explains away nuclear's troubles as due to the selective omnipotence of greens (selective, since they don't seem to be doing nearly as well on other issues) must really stretch their conspiracy theorizing to explain such a widespread result.

I will also note that you didn't explain how nuclear can power mining in a way that renewables can't.

The quantity of mining required for nuclear vs. solar and wind is massively different.

Both are small compared to the mining needed for society as a whole. So why the hand wringing? You are desperately straining to make a mountain out of a foothill.

Well no, I am simply certain, from study, that the 100% renewables future being touted is a pipe dream at anything approaching mid 20th century energy consumption levels.

Show me one model that does work with any technology, please, any source anywhere I promise I will review.

Mining to get renewables to anything like the GWHours needed is very significant, look at the graphs in the data I provided

Instead of any kind of data that would show me how I am wrong, all the data I am getting is downvotes and wordage.

You may feel certain, but by the arguments you've given so far that belief does not appear to have any rational basis.

Are these arguments what led you to the belief, or are they rationalizations you've tried to construct after the fact? They don't appear to be things that a skeptical, rigorously rational person would have come up with.

Read and watch what I sent you in previous posts please, it will only take about 20 hours of your time, and then you will know.

ps. During the 2000s, around ten new copper deposits were discovered each year worldwide. In the 2010s, it was more like 3 to 4 on average. And over the past three years, there has been a total of... one discovery, according to Les Echos: https://t.ly/yhqQr

For copper, as with many other underground resources, discoveries eventually decline over time. It's similar for oil: the peak of annual discoveries of "conventional" oil fields—everything except shale oil—was 60 years ago, and 50 years ago for gas.

Additionally, the copper content in new mines tends to decrease: it is now about 0.5% on average (it was ten times higher a century ago). This means that to extract one kg of copper, you need to extract, crush, and process 200 kg of rock. The higher this number, the more energy is required for a mine to maintain the same production.

For the current production of 20 million tons of copper per year, a few billion tons of ore need to be processed annually—more than for iron! Incidentally, over a billion tons of rock is also processed annually to extract 3,000 tons of gold.

The International Energy Agency has long pointed out that copper production may start to decline in the coming years (even though more is needed in its decarbonization scenarios). A 15-year forecast is reasonably relevant because it takes this long—or even 20 years—to bring a new mine into operation after discovery.

It's not just about permits: roads must be built, a power network for high-power machines, water supply and wastewater treatment facilities, processing plants, etc.

Thus, the production from existing and planned mines is fairly predictable over the next one to two decades. Is it serious if there's less copper?

Maybe, for electrifying 1.5 billion two-ton vehicles. For having only half or a third of that fleet consisting of small vehicles (an electric bicycle requires 100 times fewer materials than an electric car, and there are, of course, intermediate possibilities), maybe not.

For energy, the economic world has not understood that the signal of its decline won't be an indefinite price increase but a contraction of "physical" production (happening in Europe since 2007). A decline in energy means a shortfall in production, hence incomes, leading to less energy but less solvent consumers, with a new price that could settle "anywhere."

For a systemic metal, it will be the same: reduced supply will result in decreased material production, but not necessarily an indefinite price increase. The economy is primarily about the physical!