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Having a more efficient process to access highly-enriched Uranium? Is it really desirable to have much more at least weapons-capable material out in the wild?
by RandomLensman 3y ago
Having a more efficient process to access highly-enriched Uranium? Is it really desirable to have much more at least weapons-capable material out in the wild?
Also, interesting to see them go all in on a big future with retro-tech.
- epistasis 3y agoWeapons and safety concerns are pretty minimal concerned to basic viability of the tech, I think. Steam generation for electricity is mostly a dead end, IMHO. Being attached to it is like saying that typewriters have been the backbone of business communication for a century, so we had better invest big in them for the future.
- RandomLensman 3y agoSo far very little civil use of HEU outside of research reactors and quite a bit of control around it around the world from the non-proliferation treaty.
- ortusdux 3y agoUranium extraction from seawater looks quite promising. I spoke with some researchers a few years back that were able to demonstrate the ability to produce yellowcake at $200/lb. The current market price is $70/lb, but the actual cost of the uranium is such a small piece of the pie that paying 3x for a domestic, non-mining source makes sense. The initial research was done in rather cold seawater, but they did demonstrate that the process was faster with warm water. Last I heard, they were working on testing the viability of post-filtering hot brine from desalination plants, which should be much more efficent.
- RandomLensman 3y agoStill need to enrich then. Right now there is surplus of HEU from nuclear disarmament but it wasn't cheap to create it.