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New Material Can Soak Up Uranium From Seawater (acs.org)
A new adsorbent material "soaks up uranium from seawater, leaving interfering ions behind," reports the ACS's Chemical & Engineering News, in an article shared by webofslime:
The world's oceans contain some 4 billion metric tons of dissolved uranium. That's roughly 1,000 times as much as all known terrestrial sources combined, and enough to fuel the global nuclear power industry for centuries. But the oceans are so vast, and uranium's concentration in seawater is so low -- roughly 3 ppb -- that extracting it remains a formidable challenge... Researchers have been looking for ways to extract uranium from seawater for more than 50 years...
Nearly 20 years ago, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) confirmed that amidoxime-functionalized polymers could soak up uranium reliably even under harsh marine conditions. But that type of adsorbent has not been implemented on a large scale because it has a higher affinity for vanadium than uranium. Separating the two ions raises production costs. Alexander S. Ivanov of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, together with colleagues there and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other institutions, may have come up with a solution. Using computational methods, the team identified a highly selective triazine chelator known as H2BHT that resembles iron-sequestering compounds found in bacteria and fungi.... H2BHT exhibits little attraction for vanadium but has roughly the same affinity for uranyl ions as amidoxime-based adsorbents do.
Nearly 20 years ago, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) confirmed that amidoxime-functionalized polymers could soak up uranium reliably even under harsh marine conditions. But that type of adsorbent has not been implemented on a large scale because it has a higher affinity for vanadium than uranium. Separating the two ions raises production costs. Alexander S. Ivanov of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, together with colleagues there and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other institutions, may have come up with a solution. Using computational methods, the team identified a highly selective triazine chelator known as H2BHT that resembles iron-sequestering compounds found in bacteria and fungi.... H2BHT exhibits little attraction for vanadium but has roughly the same affinity for uranyl ions as amidoxime-based adsorbents do.
The world's oceans contain about 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium. The world consumes 65,000 tonnes of uranium a year. There are thus 70,000 years worth of uranium at current consumption rates in the ocean. The world land reserves of uranium are estimated at 7.6 million tonnes at a recover cost of $260/kg, this is 115 years worth.
The lowest current estimated cost of recovering uranium from seawater is something like $300/kg, a price point at which the cost of the uranium still has little influence on fission power economics, and not much higher than that cost of recovery cited above for the 115 year reserve on land. The current market price of uranium right now is about $80/kg (element, not oxide), but it fluctuates a lot. The recent trendline is something like $100/kg, though in the past it has spiked as high as $400/kg (current dollars).
There no need for uranium-for-seawater in the foreseeable future (i.e. this century), and as long as mined uranium can be had for $100/kg or so there will be no steps taken to commercialize seawater extraction. Research on the topic, like this one, continues with refinements in extraction chemistry and efficiency as the focus, but not looking at the most cost-efficient extraction method, since that is the realm of commercialization. When land uranium resources start to run out, and prices rise, that is when all of the research on seawater extraction will be put to use, with a new focus on industrial operation cost and efficiency.
We are never going to run out of uranium. Even with no breeder reactors, or any thorium reactors.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Shit you're right. Good thing there aren't any methods for separating U-238 from U-235
Oh wait, there seems to be six or more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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When you gas up your car do you think about how many people could be burned to ash if we used that fuel to bomb cities instead of use it to power the transportation sector of the world?
Can't speak for anyone else, but I think about how much devastation follows this unnecessary use of fossil fuels. We could make 100% of our transportation fuel needs from algae grown on seawater by allocating a relatively small portion of desert. Well, we could have. Now that climate change is causing feet of snow to fall on Arizona, and the like, it probably wouldn't work so well as it might have.
The algae keep dying off at certain levels of scale. Also, it has to be economical and its not clear that these types of algae based bio-fuels will be economical as there is still a fair amount of effort to keep the algae alive and growing in a changing environment at scale. Plus there is the same energy density problems of bio-fuels that plague all the other renewables. Yes climate change is real. But you don't seem to be reacting as if it is because you keep telling us to wait on unicorns instead of letting us solve the problem with nuclear.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Read this:
https://www.statesman.com/news...
And this:
https://thehill.com/opinion/en...
Then go on about how renewable energy makes more economic sense than nuclear power. Let's assume that nuclear power is not profitable now. What happens as energy prices continue to rise from government mandates for renewable energy like these? At some point those lines cross and nuclear power becomes profitable again.
Also, it took decades of investment, private and public, in wind and solar energy to bring the price down like it did. This investment included the ability to build prototypes for testing and cost estimation. You think that maybe we could do the same with nuclear power? Build some prototypes of new models so that we can test the technology and economics? As it is now the problem isn't the money, there's lots of private investors willing to put money in nuclear energy. The problem is the Democrats not allowing even the construction of prototypes. Just recently we saw some prototypes getting built because of Trump, Perry, and other Republicans that are taking energy independence seriously. What we get from Democrats is a very unscientific look at the problem. They just throw other people's money at the problem and hope it buys them enough votes for the next election.
You are very correct in that the Democrat distaste for nuclear power predates the GND. That goes all the way back to Carter with his sweaters and solar panels, at least that far back. 40+ years later and we still haven't replaced nuclear power with wind and solar power. I'm guessing in another 40 years it still won't happen.
There's a name for doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
And this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...
France has been able to keep both costs and CO2 emissions low with their nuclear power. You want me to believe that we can do better than both Germany and France if only we build more batteries? Batteries don't produce electricity. To get cheap electricity out you have to put even cheaper electricity in, that's to make up for the capital investment in building the batteries and for energy losses in the storage.
Oh, and Germany already has access to ample energy storage. They sell their electricity to their neighbors that have lots of hydro and then buy it back later. They have to sell cheaper than French nuclear and then buy at prices higher than they can produce, that's just how the market works. That won't change with batteries in Germany.
You believe Germany has the technology now to build energy storage that's cheaper than storing energy in a tank of Russian natural gas? Or cheaper than Scandinavian hydro? What's stopping them then? They should be well on their way to telling France and Russia that their energy won't be needed any more. Instead we see them making plans for another natural gas pipeline from Russia.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.