Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Energy content of Uranium

The statistic that a barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of three years of human work inspired me to do the same calculation for Uranium 235.

A barrel of oil is about 138kg.

The energy density of Uranium 235 is 79 500 000 MJ per kg. So a little multiplication gives the total energy of 128kg of Uranium 235 is 1.097 x 10^16 J.

A person on average burns about 100Watts, or 100J/second. This works out to 3.2 x 10^9 J/year

Some division shows that an amount of Uranium 235 with the same mass as a barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of three and a half million years of human labor! If there was ever a better summation for why I believe in nuclear energy, I sure haven't heard .

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