Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Fish Yellowcake Uranium From the Sea With a Piece of Yarn (ieee.org)
Wave723 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: Researchers at the U.S. Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and LCW Supercritical Technologies made use of readily available acrylic fibers to pull five grams of yellowcake -- a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors -- from seawater. The milestone, announced in mid-June, follows seven years of work and a roughly US $25 million investment by the federal energy agency. Another $1.15 million is being channeled to LCW as it attempts to scale up the technique for commercial use. The effort builds on work by Japanese researchers in the late 1990s and was prompted by interest in finding alternative sources of uranium for a future time when terrestrial sources are depleted. "[U]ranium in seawater shows up in concentrations of around 3.3 parts per billion," the report notes. "With a total volume estimated at more than 4 billion tons, there is around 500 times more uranium in seawater than in land-based sources."
This proves we can dump the waste back into the ocean where it came from. The solution to pollution is dilution, and at 4 billions tons, the ocean is a great diluter
Dilution doesn't work with dumping because of currents and bioaccumulation. We figured that out in the 1970s. You are cordially invited to join us in this millennium.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wrong basically everywhere. First, the Earth's oceans are not 4 billion tons, that's the estimated quantity of yellowcake in the Earth's oceans. The Earth's oceans are about 1.4 quintillion metric tons, so you were off by about 9 orders of magnitude. Second, see drinkypoo's reply.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Switch away from Uranium and start using extremely abundant thorium instead. LFTRs could be installed at every LWR on the planet to chew through their "waste" stockpiles prior to their decomissioning, then just use said thorium for fuel.
Why on Earth would this be made public?!
Because (a) it sounds consequential for non-proliferation but (b) it is not particularly so.
Triuranium octooxide is the major component of yellowcake; the current market value of the uranium extracted in the experiment was about $0.25, which was extracted at a cost of $25 million. Of course uranium prices are volatile, so the market value of the uranium extracted in the experiment has, in recent years, been as high as a dollar. And a scaled up production plant would be more efficient too. Still, there's a long way to go before it's competitive with mining.
Now granted use-value and market-value are two different things. If a country (a) had no uranium reserves and (b) had a coastline, it could, given a very, very long time gather enough yellowcake to, say, make a bomb, because you'd need thousands of tons of the stuff to feed into your enrichment process to obtain the required fissile isotopes. If you were a landlocked regime with nuclear ambitions and no uranium reserves, you'd have to compare the time and cost to this process to the effort of finding a dodgy merchant who will sell you yellowcake under the table.all arsenal. And most countries with no uranium can obtain it on the open market by starting a civilian nuclear power program.
Proliferation should scare you, but his particular development has almost zero marginal effect. Uranium is fairly common in the Earth's crust, which is why you find it in seawater, and even countries with zero commercially viable uranium deposits, like Pakistan, can scrape together enough domestically mined uranium to build a small arsenal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.