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Read further in the article: > However, seawater concentrations of uranium are controlled by steady-state, or pseudo-equilibrium, chemical reactions between wa
by Manfredo_1 6y ago
Read further in the article:
> However, seawater concentrations of uranium are controlled by steady-state, or pseudo-equilibrium, chemical reactions between waters and rocks on the Earth, both in the ocean and on land. And those rocks contain 100 trillion tons of uranium. So whenever uranium is extracted from seawater, more is leached from rocks to replace it, to the same concentration. It is impossible for humans to extract enough uranium over the next billion years to lower the overall seawater concentrations of uranium, even if nuclear provided 100% of our energy and our species lasted a billion years.
- wwweston 6y agoThat's in the Forbes article rather than the Phys.org article. And there's a billion dollar/watt question in there. "Equilibrium" is doing a lot of work in that paragraph. In order for the claim to matter practically, the reactions he's talking about have to replenish uranium to extraction-viable concentration at the same rate it's extracted. It sounds like our Forbes writer is suggesting the process accelerates at least linearly with the extraction rate, and that'd be cool, but forgive me if I don't take it for granted without further focus on why that's a reasonable expectation.