It does of course cost far less energy to extract than it produces. It’s extraordinarily energy dense. It only takes 19,000T give or take per year to produce 20% of US energy. The US alone consumes 731,000,000T of coal per year (40,000X).

With breeder reactors we can cut that down by several hundred times - it’s just that uranium is quite abundant and very energy dense so we haven't really bothered to.

Further there’s a few billion tons in the ocean we’re working on extracting.

If we’re willing to accept extracting rare earth metals from Mongolian hellscapes like Baitou and calling wind green, it’s pretty disingenuous not to extend the same treatment to nuclear. [1] There is no free lunch.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...