Perhaps "the world" can be powered that way. But the world consists of nation-states. Many of them want to make a large portion of energy domestically, even those who do not have reliable wind or sunshine over enough area. Jacobson's reference to the Apollo moon project reminds me of the political scientist Yonosuke Nagai's remark that "Americans can go to the moon because the space in between is not inhabited by opponents."
For the sake of your other arguments' credibility, please be careful with claims about requirements for enriching uranium. (I wouldn't mind if you choose not to post this comment. I just want to armor your arguments against political adversaries.)
Anyone who can enrich natural uranium (NU) to 3.5% can enrich to 90%, which is enough for most kinds of nuclear weapons. (Enrichment above 90% requires more investment for diminishing returns in military utility.)
NU is like a mixture of 7 black marbles (U-235) and 993 white marbles (U-238). Enrichment to 3.5% requires raising the ratio U-235 : U-238 to 7 : 193 by removing 993 - 193 = 800 white marbles. Further enrichment to 90% requires raising the ratio to 7 : .78 by removing 193 - .78 = 192.22 white marbles.
Thus, enriching NU to 3.5% requires more work than enrichment from 3.5% to 90%. The important inequality is 993 - 193 > 193 - .78 , not 3.5 - 0.7 < 90 - 3.5. In this illustration, the tails assay was zero, i.e., no black marble was removed.
More realistically, if the separated waste (tails) contained 0.3% U-235, then the separative work required to enrich 1 t NU to 3.5% is 0.55 kSWU (thousand separative work units). Further enrichment of the product (125 kg) to 90%, with the same tails assay, requires only 0.32 kSWU of separative work. Again, enrichment from 3.5% to 90% requires less work than enriching NU to 3.5%.
Why would Pakistan be better than Indonesia as the Muslim world's permanent rep on the UNSC? Nuclear weapons?
Perhaps "the world" can be powered that way. But the world consists of nation-states. Many of them want to make a large portion of energy domestically, even those who do not have reliable wind or sunshine over enough area. Jacobson's reference to the Apollo moon project reminds me of the political scientist Yonosuke Nagai's remark that "Americans can go to the moon because the space in between is not inhabited by opponents."
For the sake of your other arguments' credibility, please be careful with claims about requirements for enriching uranium. (I wouldn't mind if you choose not to post this comment. I just want to armor your arguments against political adversaries.)
Anyone who can enrich natural uranium (NU) to 3.5% can enrich to 90%, which is enough for most kinds of nuclear weapons. (Enrichment above 90% requires more investment for diminishing returns in military utility.)
NU is like a mixture of 7 black marbles (U-235) and 993 white marbles (U-238). Enrichment to 3.5% requires raising the ratio U-235 : U-238 to 7 : 193 by removing 993 - 193 = 800 white marbles. Further enrichment to 90% requires raising the ratio to 7 : .78 by removing 193 - .78 = 192.22 white marbles.
Thus, enriching NU to 3.5% requires more work than enrichment from 3.5% to 90%. The important inequality is 993 - 193 > 193 - .78 , not 3.5 - 0.7 < 90 - 3.5. In this illustration, the tails assay was zero, i.e., no black marble was removed.
More realistically, if the separated waste (tails) contained 0.3% U-235, then the separative work required to enrich 1 t NU to 3.5% is 0.55 kSWU (thousand separative work units). Further enrichment of the product (125 kg) to 90%, with the same tails assay, requires only 0.32 kSWU of separative work. Again, enrichment from 3.5% to 90% requires less work than enriching NU to 3.5%.