Non-renewable resource

It is projected that fossil-based resources will eventually become too costly to harvest and humanity will need to shift its reliance to renewable energy such as solar or wind power.

Since the dawn of internal combustion engine technologies in the 19th century, petroleum and other fossil fuels have remained in continual demand.

As a result, conventional infrastructure and transport systems, which are fitted to combustion engines, remain predominant around the globe.

The modern-day fossil fuel economy is widely criticized for its lack of renewability, as well as being a contributor to climate change.

[7] The American Petroleum Institute likewise does not consider conventional nuclear fission as renewable, but rather that breeder reactor nuclear power fuel is considered renewable and sustainable, noting that radioactive waste from used spent fuel rods remains radioactive and so has to be very carefully stored for several hundred years.

[9] The use of nuclear technology relying on fission requires naturally occurring radioactive material as fuel.

Uranium, the most common fission fuel, is present in the ground at relatively low concentrations and mined in 19 countries.

[12] In 2014, with the advances made in the efficiency of seawater uranium extraction, a paper in the journal of Marine Science & Engineering suggests that with, light water reactors as its target, the process would be economically competitive if implemented on a large scale.

[14] Nuclear energy production is associated with potentially dangerous radioactive contamination as it relies upon unstable elements.

[17] The storage of this unused uranium and the accompanying fission reaction products has raised public concerns about risks of leaks and containment, however studies conducted on the natural nuclear fission reactor in Oklo Gabon, have informed geologists on the proven processes that kept the waste from this 2 billion year old natural nuclear reactor.

In the natural environment water, forests, plants and animals are all renewable resources, as long as they are adequately monitored, protected and conserved.

The overfishing of the oceans is one example of where an industry practice or method can threaten an ecosystem, endanger species and possibly even determine whether or not a fishery is sustainable for use by humans.

[28] The Hartwick's rule provides an important result about the sustainability of welfare in an economy that uses non-renewable resources.

A coal mine in Wyoming , United States. Coal , produced over millions of years, is a finite and non-renewable resource on a human time scale.
Raw gold ore that is eventually smelted down into gold metal
Rössing uranium mine is the longest-running and one of the largest open pit uranium mines in the world; in 2005 it produced eight percent of global uranium oxide needs (3,711 tons). [ 4 ] The most productive mines are the underground McArthur River uranium mine in Canada, which produces 13% of the world's uranium, and the underground poly-metallic Olympic Dam mine in Australia, which is mainly a copper mine, but contains the largest known reserve of uranium ore.
Annual release of "technologically enhanced"/concentrated naturally occurring radioactive material , uranium and thorium radioisotopes naturally found in coal and concentrated in heavy/bottom coal ash and airborne fly ash . [ 5 ] As predicted by ORNL to cumulatively amount to 2.9 million tons over the 1937–2040 period, from the combustion of an estimated 637 billion tons of coal worldwide. [ 6 ] This 2.9 million tons of actinide fuel, a resource derived from coal ash, would be classified as low grade uranium ore if it occurred naturally.
The Three Gorges Dam , the largest renewable energy generating station in the world.
Satellite map showing areas flooded by the Three Gorges reservoir. Compare 7 November 2006 (above) with 17 April 1987 (below). The energy station required the flooding of archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people, and is causing significant ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides . [ 21 ] The dam has been a controversial topic both domestically and abroad. [ 22 ]