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The question I have is, why would it be preferable to extract Uranium from seawater (where it has a very low concentration) rather than finding a deposit of Ura

The question I have is, why would it be preferable to extract Uranium from seawater (where it has a very low concentration) rather than finding a deposit of Uranium somewhere and mining it?

philipkglass 8y ago
The oceans represent, in principle, an extremely large but extremely dilute uranium resource. So far nobody has managed to make seawater extraction of uranium even close to competitive with terrestrial mining. But if it could get within spitting distance of terrestrial mining, there would be multiple advantages: - Eliminating geostrategic concerns about import dependency: any nation with a coastline could extract its own uranium. - Extreme abundance: uranium dissolved in the oceans dwarfs that known to exist in identified terrestrial ore bodies. - Lower environmental and worker health risks: no production of waste tailings, no digging into ore bodies. There's very limited worker exposure to uranium decay chain daughters (radium, radon) with the oceanic approach. Terrestrial ore bodies contain uranium plus its decay products while the absorbent won't concentrate the decay products. Japan has been a leader in researching this approach. It was originally driven by concern over energy import dependency: Japan is very reliant on imports for both fossil and nuclear fuels. But Japan does have easy access to seawater.
- vladTheInhaler 8y ago
  Do we really want to democratize access to uranium? For nonproliferation it seems really convenient that uranium access is so limited.
  - 08-15 8y ago
    To recreate "little boy", you would need about 10 tons of natural uranium. Absent any better ores, you could mine that from coal ash, which typically has a uranium concentration of 10-100ppm. You really think that's limiting? It's not... for a weapons program, that kind of ridiculously expensive process would be worth it. For comparison, to fuel one reactor of 1GW(e) for a year, you need about 200 tons of uranium. Even that could be taken from coal ash, but part of the appeal of nuclear power is that you don't want to produce coal ash anymore...

The question I have is, why would it be preferable to extract Uranium from seawater (where it has a very low concentration) rather than finding a deposit of Uranium somewhere and mining it?

philipkglass 8y ago

The oceans represent, in principle, an extremely large but extremely dilute uranium resource. So far nobody has managed to make seawater extraction of uranium even close to competitive with terrestrial mining. But if it could get within spitting distance of terrestrial mining, there would be multiple advantages: - Eliminating geostrategic concerns about import dependency: any nation with a coastline could extract its own uranium. - Extreme abundance: uranium dissolved in the oceans dwarfs that known to exist in identified terrestrial ore bodies. - Lower environmental and worker health risks: no production of waste tailings, no digging into ore bodies. There's very limited worker exposure to uranium decay chain daughters (radium, radon) with the oceanic approach. Terrestrial ore bodies contain uranium plus its decay products while the absorbent won't concentrate the decay products. Japan has been a leader in researching this approach. It was originally driven by concern over energy import dependency: Japan is very reliant on imports for both fossil and nuclear fuels. But Japan does have easy access to seawater.

vladTheInhaler 8y ago
Do we really want to democratize access to uranium? For nonproliferation it seems really convenient that uranium access is so limited.
- 08-15 8y ago
  To recreate "little boy", you would need about 10 tons of natural uranium. Absent any better ores, you could mine that from coal ash, which typically has a uranium concentration of 10-100ppm. You really think that's limiting? It's not... for a weapons program, that kind of ridiculously expensive process would be worth it. For comparison, to fuel one reactor of 1GW(e) for a year, you need about 200 tons of uranium. Even that could be taken from coal ash, but part of the appeal of nuclear power is that you don't want to produce coal ash anymore...