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With the proposed scale of kilotons of Uranium per year, this comes still to hundreds of billions of tons of seawater every year. Now consider that only a tiny

With the proposed scale of kilotons of Uranium per year, this comes still to hundreds of billions of tons of seawater every year. Now consider that only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of seawater is easily accessible. There's a reason why we don't do this for gold. There is about 1/50th the amount of gold in the ocean, but it's also more than a thousand times more valuable, but it's nowhere near econimcal. The scope of this product also dwarfs all proposed solutions for climate change.

dodobirdlord 5y ago
> Now consider that only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of seawater is easily accessible. Not saying it’s an economically realistic idea, but on the topic of availability of seawater it seems like you’d just need to set up your pumping station in a location with a persistent oceanic current, filter upstream and discharge downstream, and you’d be set for thousands of years. The Straight of Gibraltar seems like a good candidate, since the large surface evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea and the comparatively small amount of water it receives from rivers means that there is a permanent current through the straight. (The Mediterranean Sea would evaporate away in about a thousand years without the Straight.) This also makes me wonder if seawater uranium concentration in the Mediterranean Sea is much higher than elsewhere. The current has been in place bringing in seawater and evaporating off the water, leaving behind all non-evaporable minerals, for over 5 million years, and the Mediterranean Sea is much saltier than the ocean in general, suggesting that uranium concentration would also be substantially elevated.
- cedilla 5y ago
  That's a very good idea, but I'm not sure if the increased difficulty in building the filters underwater in an oceanic current would really make things much easier.

dodobirdlord 5y ago

> Now consider that only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of seawater is easily accessible. Not saying it’s an economically realistic idea, but on the topic of availability of seawater it seems like you’d just need to set up your pumping station in a location with a persistent oceanic current, filter upstream and discharge downstream, and you’d be set for thousands of years. The Straight of Gibraltar seems like a good candidate, since the large surface evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea and the comparatively small amount of water it receives from rivers means that there is a permanent current through the straight. (The Mediterranean Sea would evaporate away in about a thousand years without the Straight.) This also makes me wonder if seawater uranium concentration in the Mediterranean Sea is much higher than elsewhere. The current has been in place bringing in seawater and evaporating off the water, leaving behind all non-evaporable minerals, for over 5 million years, and the Mediterranean Sea is much saltier than the ocean in general, suggesting that uranium concentration would also be substantially elevated.

cedilla 5y ago
That's a very good idea, but I'm not sure if the increased difficulty in building the filters underwater in an oceanic current would really make things much easier.