Pound of uranium – how a man can carry thirty tanker trucks worth of energy
Many people that have heard me talk about the energy density of uranium have had the opportunity to see my “three shooters” demonstration.
For those of you who are totally lost, here is the background. If you compute the volume of uranium needed for a pound of the material you can compare it almost exactly to the volume of three large marbles – those of us old enough to have played the game used to call them “shooters”. Since a pound of uranium holds as much energy as 2,000,000 pounds of oil, and since the average over the road truck can carry about 65,000 pounds, it would take 30 tanker trucks of oil to contain the same amount of potential energy as a single handful of shooters.
Therefore, “Three shooters in the hand is worth 30 trucks on the road.”
