Improving Uranium Extraction From Seawater, Inspired by Shrimp 122
New submitter Celarent Darii writes "Prospects for harvesting Uranium from seawater turned interesting by using shrimp shells as a sort of catalyst."
Researchers at ORNL presented their findings from a test of a chitin net for harvesting Uranium at the ACS fall meeting. From the ORNL press release: "In a direct comparison to the current state-of-the-art adsorbent, HiCap provides significantly higher uranium adsorption capacity, faster uptake and higher selectivity, according to test results. Specifically, HiCap's adsorption capacity is seven times higher (146 vs. 22 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent) in spiked solutions containing 6 parts per million of uranium at 20 degrees Celsius. In seawater, HiCap's adsorption capacity of 3.94 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent was more than five times higher than the world's best at 0.74 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent. The numbers for selectivity showed HiCap to be seven times higher."
If shrimp purchases indicate proliferation (Score:4, Funny)
Then Vegas is acquiring it's own nuclear arsenal.
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Looks at pile of shrimp.
Gets Geiger Counter.
Really, who knew these little things were so dangerous?
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It appears the giant Tiger Shrimp, from the orient...is invading [cbsnews.com] the gulf coast of the US...the much larger variety could endanger the native, smaller (and very tasty) gulf shrimps.
So, I get it...the govt is trying to introduce these larger shrimp, to use their larger and more plentiful shells to get more Uranium!?!?!?
Energy at the expense of our seafood!!!
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Nah..not at all. Gulf seafood is perfectly fine and tastes great. Hell, it is the single MOST tested food pretty much ever since the spill.
On the other hand...I used to joke right after the spill, that it would be kinda cool to be able to throw some shrimp on in the skillet to saute without having to oil the pan first...self-lubricating shrimp.
But seriously, the Gulf seafood is just fine and has been for a LONG time. Hell, I can't wa
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It's all part of Mr. House's master plan for the coming apocalypse.
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An alpha detecting counter will read from most sunflower seeds, but it doesn't tell you if the cesium the plant leached from the soil got there from cold-war atmospheric testing, Fukushima, Chernobyl, the accident covered up in 1981, or something else.
That is why when doing such work you don't just use a counter, you use some kind of energy spectrometer. From this you can get the type and energy of the radiation, which pretty quickly identifies most isotopes. Isotopic composition quickly narrows down possible sources.
(By the way, an alpha counter won't tell you about cesium in plants... as no cesium isotopes that last longer than a few seconds emit alpha particles. Most cesium decays involve positive or negative beta decay, with negative beta decays
But...? (Score:1)
...there's tonnes of Uranium around! You mine it easily - it's not so rare that you need to go looking in seawater.
Now if the shells selectively captured the Uranium-235 isotope, that WOULD be useful....
Re:But...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is lots of uranium around. But it's locked up in mines, in places such as Niger which are unstable. Japan investigated this seawater uranium source because it wanted a stable source of uranium - one that would not depend on vagaries of geology, mining, and international politics. Because seawater contains approximately the same amount of uranium throughout the world, there is no need to get the uranium - they would let the uranium come to them, via ocean currents. Its a viable idea, even before this newest chitin invention. From what I remember, the cost of ocean uranium recovery was only twice what the market price of uranium was when the Japanese documented this method, and they were confident they could make incremental progress on lowering the cost. I would assume that all of the Japanese research has been cancelled in light of the post-Fukushima madness.
Re:But...? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would guess research into filtering out radioactive elements would only increase...
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Could it replace the need to mine it for grid scale consumption?
Is it naturally replenished in the sea water or is it just there like it is in the earth (and taking out eventually depletes the stock)?
Genuinely curious
Re:But...? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia says there's 3.3 mg uranium per m^3 of seawater and the volume of the world's oceans adds up to 1.3*10^18 m^3, which means that there's 4.4*10^12 kg of uranium in the oceans, or roughly 400 kg per human in a world with 10 billion humans. That's a lot of uranium...
I don't suppose much is known about the rate at which it replenishes, but I bet scientists will be able to find out about that long before we begin to see measurable depletion of seawater uranium on a global scale.
Re:But...? (Score:5, Informative)
However, rivers bring more uranium into the sea all the time, in fact 3.2x10^4 tonne per year.
- Source [stanford.edu]
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Like oil, it isn't how much is there. Rather it is how much energy we have to exert to extract it.
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It's more complicated than that. A reliable supply that you don't need to fight for is worth a lot.
OTOH, IIUC extraction of Uranium from sea water is only marginally economically feasible. This could be improved in several ways. One way is by designing better reactors. Fast neutron reactors are frequently mentioned here, as they have the potential to burn their fuel down to safe essentially non-radioactive. But they are a trifle dangerous, as along the way they produce fuel that is quite radioactive.
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I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad at the prospect of obtaining lot's more uranium. The world has yet to demonstrate that commercial nuclear plants make any financial sense, and then there's the incredibly stupid waste storage system we have in the US (have each plant simply hang onto it). I'm more concerned over the prospect of a fire in those storage polls than a meltdown in a core.
Molten salt reactors [earthlink.net] seem promising, and there's little debate that they would be cheaper. There are other challenges, but c
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The world has yet to demonstrate that commercial nuclear plants make any financial sense
Is that compared to the energy taken to commission/decommission, or is that compared with the low cost of fossil fuels which don't have to pay for the destruction they will unleash? Current consensus seems to be that it's likely climate change will wreck us before the oil runs out, so relying on current economics is not a very helpful way of decision-making.
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Yes, there is lots of uranium around. But it's locked up in mines, in places such as Niger which are unstable.
I suppose you consider Saskatchewan, Canada to be "unstable"?
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Depends on how much they've been drinking. Same as the rest of Canada.
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i was about to mention the many mines in Australia (including the largest in the world), but what you say applies equally here.
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Hm... The next Uranium mine from my birthplace was about 10 mls, the next one still in operation is about 30 mls. And I grew up in a region which hasn't seen any armed conflicts since World War II. The next Uranium deposit from where I live now is 20 mls, although it doesn't get mined.
Uranium is plenty, and you can get it nearly everywhere. If there is an old silver mine nearby, you can be pretty sure that you found the next Uranium deposit. The problem is not so much the finding and mining of Uranium, the
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If you are really interested in seeing the Uranium mine still in operation, get out any online map with satellite view and look for "Koenigstein/Saechsische Schweiz (Deutschland)", zoom into the map until you can see the Fortress Königstein. About one mile west of the fortress, you see the mine. It might be labelled "Wismut NL Königstein".
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but what would they do with the filtered water? think of the people with crustacean allergies!
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Yeah, but the potential of extraction from seawater is mind boggling. The Japanese have been working on this for a long time, and they estimate the uranium content of the main current off their coast carries by more uranium in a year than the total known reserves left in the ground. I just hope the Fukishima disaster doesn't put a damper on the basic research they are doing.
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"Japanese Miracle"?
Uranium (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike oil, uranium will be found in comets, asteroids, planets, and deep within the earth. This applies to thorium as well. Effectively, it is an inexhaustible resource. The deeper you mine, the greater density of rock and the greater likeliness you will find uranium. Once we are able to mine the mantle we will be able to travel to the stars.
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And when pigs grow wings, they will be able to fly.
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And man will never fly in heavier than air machines. Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before from your ilk.
Read up on it. The amount of uranium in the oceans is staggering, and combined with a well thought out chain of nuclear reactor types, where the waste from one can feed the next in line, could solve humanity's energy problem effectively forever.
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solve humanity's energy problem effectively forever.
Fortunately it gives us LOTS of new problems to deal with. At least we won't be bored. Or need nightlights...
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Many uranium mines also produce copper, silver and gold from the same ore, which makes the mining more commercially viable than if it was nothing other than a low concentration of uranium oxide. Of course there are proven methods to extrac
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Well, ...
not in comets, not likely in asteroids either, and with uranium alone you can't travel to the stars anyway
The densitiy point is utter nonsense as well.
Why should the densitiy have anything to do with the minerals bound in it?
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Once we are able to mine the mantle we will be able to travel to the stars.
Sorry, but there's that pesky relativity getting in the way. It takes light four to ten years to get here from the ten nearest stars, none of which have shown evidence of earthlike planets. I'm afraid it's going to be centuries, or more likely never, that we travel the stars. Sorry, but there's a reason they call it science fiction.
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It's going to take centuries before we mine the mantle, so that's about right. And relativity is no barrier to generational ships.
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And relativity is no barrier to generational ships.
Radiation is. There is an excellent science fiction novel about a generational ship that covers it well. I wish I could remember the name and author, but it's been a long time since I read it. Part of the plot concerned mutations in people that lived too close to the outer hull.
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Apparently peak uranium [sonnenseite.com] is expected to hit in 2035. We're already producing less than we can use. The only inexhaustible energy source is going to be hydrogen fusion.
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What the original poster says about the deposits of uranium and thorium are true. However, technology, politics, and economics are blocking its effective use. Mostly politics.
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He made sense until he jumped into fueling a starship. Only hydorgen fusion or anti-matter conversion are reasonable fuels for that level of energy need. Unless...
My personal favorite is a LOW speed LARGE spaceship. Something larger than James Blish's New York, but nowhere near as fast. It can't go fast, because it needs to scavenge interstellar materials as it goes. Small asteroids, comet heads, etc. By not going fast, it reduces it's energy needs considerably. But scavenging materials it picks up
Chitin (Score:4, Informative)
Chitin is also what makes up the body shells of insects. While these molten salts mentioned may be the best way to extract chitin, it also is soluble in d-limonene, an extract of citrus fruit peels.
This would be very good news, if people valued it properly. As much as a think the LFTR (which doesn't depend on uranium as a fuel) is a better type of reactor, there are limitations on its fuel source, which is thorium. Thorium is more plentiful, but it is not water soluble, so it doesn't benefit from this type of mining technique.
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Thorium is more plentiful, but it is not water soluble, so it doesn't benefit from this type of mining technique
huh?
you don't need to enslave the population of a 3rd-world country in order to mine Thorium, either. but i don't see that as a negative. the stuff is (almost) everywhere, you don't need to resort to crazy mining/extraction techniques. you can just, you know, dig it up out of the ground.
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I think the problems with thorium lie more in the reactor technologies than in the ability to obtain it...
Similarly, while this is cool, I would vastly prefer to see work on improved reactor technologies that greatly reduce our need for fresh uranium input into the process.
Look at the IFR as an example - Most of our existing reactor waste could be used as fuel for these reactors, or at least in "breeder blankets" used to generate more fuel.
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Thorium is currently a waste product of mining other elements that are in demand.
Though you could probably line the walls of your house with it and live just fine, Thorium is a bit radioactive and the Laws kick-in to prevent you from even stock piling the stuff.
TL;DR: Thorium is not a desirable element in mining. You can't get rid of the stuff. (in the UPS, at least)
Does it pan out? (Score:2)
How much energy does it take to create these mats, put them in place, harvest, etc. Wouldn't this rather rapidly reduce the local concentration of uranium in seawater, requiring the mats to constantly be moved (or placed in areas with strong currents flushing new supplies through)? Seems like an interesting idea, but at only roughly $50 per pound (for uranium oxide) it really doesn't seem like this would pan out without massively increased demand for uranium. Maybe go after something valuable, like gold or
Re:Does it pan out? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not economically feasible now, but the energy balance works out. Even with the previous method that was only 1/5th as efficient, you got much more energy out of the uranium than was required to collect it.
Seawater moves around, and the process still isn't that efficient, so you wouldn't have any problems with decreased concentration.
The reason this is valuable is not so much that it's economical today, as that there's enough uranium in the ocean to provide all our electricity needs for millions of years.
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Ok, fine, lets say there's only thousands of years of Uranium usable in today's reactors. You don't think that maybe, just maybe, reactor design would change over the next few thousand years?
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"maybe, reactor design would change over the next few thousand years?"
"no I don't see much happening for another couple of decades (in the Western World)"
Ah, Slashdot.
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The reason this is valuable is not so much that it's economical today, as that there's enough uranium in the ocean to provide all our electricity needs for millions of years.
But it might prove useful for decontamination. Perhaps the uranium-free water is more important than the water-free uranium.
It might also prove useful for countries trying to develop nuclear systems (both peaceful and military) in secret. Sure, you'd still have to use a centrifuge process to get weapons-grade stuff, but this would allow any non-landlocked country to obtain natural-state uranium.
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no, you would not need to move the collecting apparatus. You would have placed it in an area with sufficient current so that the water would be quickly circulated. It wouldn't be very hard, seawater moves around a real lot.
In regards to the price, see the other posts I made here regarding price stability being important. Take a look at this historical price chart: http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_PriceChart.aspx?chart=spot-u3o8-full and you can see that there have been price spikes in the past decade.
I do not
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Mining uranium from the earth is not energy free, so it is a matter of using the most efficient technique. Or using both techniques and balancing one against the other.
Also, the seas move due to ocean currents. The same water does not stay in the same place for long.
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It doesn't sound cost-effective to me, either. But I don't think refreshing the water will be a problem - ocean currents are very swift and move a lot of volume. Stick a mat in the Gulf Stream, and the water is moving around 4MPH past it. The volume of water in the Gulf Stream is also enormous - between 30 and 150 cubic meters per second.
Since there are about 3.3g of U in a cubic meter of seawater, that gives a minimum of 99g/second just passing by in the Gulf Stream. The world currently consumes around 70,
Re:Does it pan out? (Score:5, Informative)
30 to 150 million cubic metres per second. So 12 minutes of Gulf Stream flow would contain enough uranium to supply our present needs for a year.
Though if you could tap the entire Gulf Stream you'd have another source of energy at hand...
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Don't laugh - I had a friend at the army corp who was working on feasibility calculations to build a wall that would divert the Gulf Stream to hug the East Coast of the US.
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Why? To increase the coastal erosion we already have?
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To bring the same benefits to the Eastern US that Europe currently enjoys: milder winters and a longer growing season.
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Yeah, pretty much. I'd pay to see the report.
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What are you going to do hold your breath?
Seriously, you can't spot this as obvious nonsense?
Would you also object to the monster raving loony party towing England south to improve their climate?
Re:Does it pan out? (Score:4, Informative)
You left out a few prefixes of "million" and "milli", making your analysis way off, at first. There are 30 million cubic meters per sec of gulf stream flow. there are 3 milligrams of Uranium per cubic meter of seawater. So that's 90 Kilos of Uranium per second.
But you're unlikely to be able to intercept more than a thousandth of the gulf stream, so we're back to 90 g per second. the goofs cancel out!
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Unfortunately I took my numbers from Wikipedia, and they are all off by a million here and a thousand there :(
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That's 30 to 150 Sverdrups [wikipedia.org]. A Sverdrup is 1.000.000 m^3/s, aka 1.000.000.000 kg/s, and thus at 0.003ppm U by mass, contains 3 kilograms per second, meaning to recover 70.000 tonnes a year (70.000.000kg) takes ~23.000.000 seconds, aka 270 days, aka a 3/4ths recovery rate is sufficient.
Of course, the Gulf Stream is just one of the Earth's many oceanic currents [wikimedia.org].
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Ahhh, that explains why the volume numbers on Wikipedia didn't pass the sniff test.
It seems they also have a bad number for the 3.3g of U per cubic meter of seawater... it should be 1000 times less than that. That did seem a tad high.
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A quibic meter of sea water does not hold 3.3 grams Uranium but 3.3 mili grams.
What's a "sort of" catalyst? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that like a "sort of" virgin, or a "sort of" complete ignoramus?
It's a word with a very specific scientific meaning. Use it for that purpose, or find a different one.
Cockroaches of the sea (Score:2)
I can't see why anyone eats shrimp.
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Because they taste good?
If cockroaches tasted as good I would eat those too.
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because not everyone is Jewish or Muslim. Some people like it. get over it.
Re:Cockroaches of the sea (Score:4, Insightful)
The better question is, why don't more people eat cockroaches?
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because the kinds of microbes that live in cockroaches are the same kind that make you dead.
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Because the slimy inside taste terrible an you can't peel them like shrimps( and get some clean muscle tissue).
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The little ones don't have a good meat to shell ratio. And people already eat the big ones [wikipedia.org].
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Fail the mayor. Not ever.
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There are cheaper sources of water on and under the surface. People are not afraid to go with desalination when necessary.
So much fail, so little comment (Score:2)
We need it to produce electricity; we already have enough fissile material to blow up whomever we want.
And the countries we would prefer to turn into a flat landscape of radioactive glass (I liked the idea of calling it New Iowa, myself), have oil but no fresh water.
Most of us don't need more fresh water, provided we manage to keep our "economic engine" from screwing up the supplies we have and quit having more children. Those last two are not advice the politicians on the right side of the aisle endorse, t
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And the countries we would prefer to turn into a flat landscape of radioactive glass... have oil but no fresh water.
Maybe you're not aware of what's under the ground where this man [csmonitor.com] walked... oh yeah, and this guy also [prunejuicemedia.com]. This should enlighten you what this "Arab Spring" was really about.
more Uranium? (Score:2, Informative)
Uranium sucks:
unless you're talking Uranium-233 [wikipedia.org] bred in a thorium-fueled reactor, of course...
Re:more Uranium? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that, with continued research into sea water extraction, your first four objections go away? It could be extracted from anywhere with access to the sea, as safely as fishing, and there is enough to power all of humanity for thousands of years. As to the rest, proliferation is largely a political problem, one that can't be ignored no doubt but certainly not insurmountable. Waste is a larger issue of course, breeder reactors would help there but you've still got to put it somewhere. I'd say launch it into the sun once we get the rocket tech to do that efficiently but that seems awfully wasteful (after all, if it's energetic enough to be dangerous we can probably find a user for it somewhere in the long term).
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with continued research into sea water extraction, your first four objections go away
actually 2&3 are still valid. regardless, it's only viable when you get from $300/lb pre-process to $50/lb market.
there's NO excuse for enriching Uranium anywhere (i'm looking at Iran/N. Korea here), other than 1) making weapons, or 2) supporting a (environmentally|politically|economically) hazardous status-quo.
Re:more Uranium? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what 2 even means; "hard to mine?" Lots of things are hard - try raising kids. In economic terms, "hard" just means "expensive". It's either affordable or it isn't.
In context of the total cost of nuclear power, it's been getting expensive and rare lately because of soaring *construction* costs, not fuel costs, since fuel costs are a single-digit percentage of the whole; it's almost all about paying off the multi-billion-dollar mortgage on the plant. Even before this discovery, the Japanese believed they could extract uranium from seawater for a few hundred dollars per kg - that's several times the current price, but should we "run out of uranium" (i.e. nothing but "hard" places left), then a ceiling will be put on the price, since it would take many centuries of "mining the sea" for the concentration to decline.
Before that happens, of course, it'll become affordable to re-process spent nuclear fuel, which means 97% of what is currently regarded as "waste" will become fuel again, because reprocessing costs 3X as much as mining new stuff. That 30:1 ratio will stretch out the supply a ways.
As for "dangerous", your own link to radon notes that new standards for mining procedure were enacted back in 1971. Most of the data on higher lung cancers and so forth come from those exposed some time ago, particularly Navaho uranium miners, where there were many allegations that racism prevented a more serious response to their concerns.
More recently you can run across comments like this one:
On June 18, 2004, the Saskatchewan Uranium Miners' Cohort Study Group released its report on a feasiblity study it had begun in 2002:
"It concludes that it is not scientifically feasible to conduct a study of present and future miners who work in modern Saskatchewan uranium mines (1975 onward). Today’s Saskatchewan uranium miners have radon exposures that are between 100 and 1000 times lower than those of past uranium miners, such as miners from Beaverlodge, because of dose limits, improved mining techniques, and other radiation protection practices. Any higher-than-normal rates of lung cancer from such workplace exposures would be virtually impossible to measure. The feasibility study was completed in October 2003 and it was then reviewed by three internationally respected radiation researchers." [ http://www.wise-uranium.org/uhm.html [wise-uranium.org] ]
Simply, this is an engineering and economic issue. Proper safety procedure lowers the risks of mining hazardous materials (where do you think things like arsenic and mercury come from? Somebody has to extract and purify them...), and make the risks tolerable - at least as tolerable as coal mining, your only practical alternative...and they also increase the cost of the extraction, which is then either affordable or it isn't. In the case of the nuclear industry, it would probably only a a tenth-cent per kWh to pay double or triple for uranium, so it's always going to be affordable to mine it - and dispose of it - safely.
The industry doesn't WANT to, any more than slaughterhouses want to pay a decent wage and up the cost of your hamburger by a nickel; but that's a "mere" matter of regulating the activities of very wealthy investors. Hard, (sorry) but possible.
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I just ran out of mod points or you'd get a +1 informative.
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Proper safety procedure lowers the risks of mining hazardous materials (where do you think things like arsenic and mercury come from? Somebody has to extract and purify them...), and make the risks tolerable - at least as tolerable as coal mining, your only practical alternative
Coal mining isn't as safe as you'd think
Here are the headlines from an NPR series on black lung [npr.org]
As Mine Protections Fail, Black Lung Cases Surge
Black-Lung Rule Loopholes Leave Miners Vulnerable
Black Lung: Why Respirators Are Not A Solution
Surface Coal Miners At Risk For Black Lung
Federal Mine Agency Considering Tougher Response On Black Lung
Republican Lawmakers Seek To Block Funding On Black Lung Regulation
And this has been going on since the late 90s.
Apparently mining Uranium is safer than mining for coal.
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Thanks. I didn't mean coal was safe, just that if you can stand coal, you can definitely stand uranium.
Coal is so bad, it's incredible anybody puts up any fuss about the poisonousness of nuclear waste - an estimated 24,000 lives lost in America per year from breathing issues alone...that's before you get into the tons of mercury dumped into the air every year by coal plants.
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I'd say launch it into the sun once we get the rocket tech to do that efficiently but that seems awfully wasteful
That would actually take a good bit more energy than just ejecting it from the solar system entirely.
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Well, they ARE loaded with extremely high density fuel. Just get it into orbit and then use that stuff to propel it wherever you want. Heck, shoot them out in random directions with messages to aliens written on the side. The isotopes will continue to decay for millenia, and should be easy to detect for any reasonably advanced species studying the heavens. Add in some nuclear powered broadcasters of some kind if you want to be really sure it gets attention. When suitably advanced extraterrestrials notice th
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That would actually take a good bit more energy than just ejecting it from the solar system entirely.
getting it into the Sun is not the problem, it's getting it safely off the Earth [bbc.co.uk] that's the issue.
the thorium fuel cycle produces ~30x less long-lasting hazardous waste than uranium per W output (~15kg/GWyr).
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If we have reached the point where we have pissed off Canada and Australia [wikipedia.org], we really are screwed.
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availability for domestic use is not the issue. my concern is the ability of nutjobs to achieve their desired goal of prematurely bringing the end of the world.
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Stop that! The kids want their dream of "clean" nuclear power running on roses and puppy farts without the nasty reality getting in the way. You'll be telling them there's no Santa next.
Well, if the roses are made from Thorium and the puppies fart U-233, then that's a good dream in my book. Imagine all those countries in Africa able to feed their population for free by irrigating the deserts with water pumped & desalinated from the sea, cultivating their crops with machinery running on hydrogen electrolyzed from the same. Fuck if we can pump crude from Alaska to Texas, we should be able to move some water around.
Or we could just keep mining uranium and make more bombs.
Didn't know "adsorption" was a word (Score:2)
Sounds fishy to me. (Score:2)
And likely to make me crabby. So, taken from seawater to light bulb. Is it energy positive or not? And what does it cost per watt? And why do I still start sentences with "And?"
Other elements (Score:2)
1) something to burn up current waste. It will still require loads of 'waste' which it will burn up.
2) thorium reactors.
As such, pulling uranium is not that big of a deal.
Now, if they can pull a number of other elements out of there, they would have something [seafriends.org.nz]. If you look at this, you will see some rather useful elements:
Lithium
Metals such as Alum