at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?
Yeah uranium can power the entire world for about as long as the sun will run. This requires breeder reactors, which were first proven in 1952 at the EBR-1 in Idaho.
Indeed, and there AFAIK were some "tandem" (desalination+uranium) projects, however nothing appeared therefore there may be severe practical constraints or technical hurdles. Maybe later(?)
Part of it I think is Uranium is easy to get economically right now, and has a pretty limited set of potential buyers (and the set isn’t growing very quickly).
Most Uranium mines (15000 worked claims in the Midwest in particular) no one even bothers with.
Cool or not, if one of the 5 major mines decides to cut prices, you’d better be awfully efficient right now.
Uranium was cheap from the 1960 until now, bar ~3 years around 2007 (a 'Bubble'), however research towards ways to not depend on it (mostly towards breeder reactors) was very intense in many nations from the 1950's to 2000, because of an economic perspective (there is no clear reason for uranium prices to stay low, especially after a nuclear 'Renaissance' and given that it is tied to ore grade, which gets lower and lower), a social perspective (breeders and such reduce the amount of nuclear waste and risk associated to it), and for some nations also a strategic perspective (all existing uranium sellers live under a superpower).
