Uranium seawater extraction makes nuclear power completely renewable - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/ America, Japan and China are racing to be the first nation to make nuclear energy completely renewable. The hurdle is making it economic to extract uranium from seawater, because the amount of uranium in seawater is truly inexhaustible. And it seems America is in the lead. New technological breakthroughs from DOE’s Pacific Northwest (PNNL) and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories have made removing uranium from seawater within economic reach and the only question is - when will the source of uranium for our nuclear power plants change from mined ore to seawater extraction? Stephen Kung, in DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, says that “Finding alternatives to uranium ore mining is a necessary step in planning for the future of nuclear energy.” And these advances by PNNL and ORNL have reduced the cost by a factor of four in just five years. But it’s still over $200/lb of U3O8, twice as much as it needs to be to replace mining uranium ore. Fortunately, the cost of uranium is a small percentage of the cost of nuclear fuel, which is itself a small percentage of the cost of nuclear power. Over the last twenty years, uranium spot prices have varied between $10 and $120/lb of U3O8, mainly from changes in the availability of weapons-grade uranium to blend down to make reactor fuel. So as the cost of extracting U from seawater falls to below $100/lb, it will become a commercially viable alternative to mining new uranium ore. But even at $200/lb of U3O8, it doesn’t add more than a small fraction of a cent per kWh to the cost of nuclear power.

This only matters if we continue to use nuclear power.

What the fuck

Stephen Kung I have a bad feeling doing this will open some portal to another dimension.

It's not truly renewable, but it does guarantee millions of years of supply. We'll e long dead or far beyond Earth at that point.

Ultimately uranium fission should be a temporary holdover for fusion, which uses some of the most abundant elements in the universe.

"But... but.. but coal! Coal is completely clean! Stop oppressing coal! You're worse than Nazis!" - US government

dam it feels genuinly weird to hear positive news

which we should, considering its nowhere near as dangerous or as damaging to the environment as people think it is.

I'm at a point where I'm straight up skeptical of good news, especially science news

Why wouldn't we? It's less carbon intensive than renewable energy, especially if you want a stable power source.

uranium and nuclear fuel scarcity isn't really the issue behind nuclear power.

Cool stuff. The article is more than 2 years old though, and there has been progress since then. Here is an article showing it actually happening, apparently using an improved technique: Seawater yields first grams of yellowcake (PNNL)

Because uninformed politicians make decisions based on fearmongering. In Belgium they've been trying to move away from nuclear power for a long time, and it's resulted in old plants remaining open and having maintenance issues, which are then used to justify the move. We've had to import electricity as a result.

also produces less nuclear waste than coal

You're welcome. Seriously though, it's looking like France is eventually going to be the only major net electricity exporter in Europe. If other countries want to transition away from fossil fuel sources but don't want to commit to nuclear energy, they're going to have to rely on countries that do for stability.

Okay, stupid question - how exacly is extracting Uranium from seawater - as opposed to mining it - renewable? It's not like sunlight, wind or hydroelectric turbines which don't really run out, you're still extracting something, right? Or is Frakking a renewable way to get oil?

There's more of it in seawater than in the ground, which makes it technically more renewable. Of course, no energy source is truly renewable. Even the sun will die at some point.

The article says it's from 2016, is that correct or has there been a follow up or something?

I demand Orkel falls on his sword for 2 yr old article only fair

Well I mean there's no such thing as a truly indefinite resource due to thermodynamics and entropy. You will eventually run out of usable energy no matter what. Our immediate concern is finding sources that are long lasting and also don't contribute significantly to emissions.

I have worked for uranium exploration as a Geophysicist and I can tell you that we still have so so so plentyful of it, sold by African countries through old as hell colonial structures that no other method will beat it in terms of affordability for the first world nations. Research on this is much more politically viable than from an economic standpoint.

God knows why - it's more productive, cleaner, safer and ultimately more cheaper in the long run then oil. Sure it causes some pollution but the small amount it does cause is negligible compared to Oil

There's a lot of uranium in seawater. More than we could use for several thousand years.

building on this I'd assume the downsides of uranium mining are mitigated since you're filtering it out of water with no chance of it getting washed into the water table

This is from 2016. Orkel I am disappoint

let me ban him

Ughhh fine

doesn't matter to me if it's that old, i never saw it before that said this gives us an even better incentive to actually get off our asses and start producing power with uranium

I really hope that the world stops fearing nuclear because of a few freak accidents in the past. Especially since newer reactors have much stricter safety standards and modern designs are built around not being able to melt down in the first place. Give us the peaceful atomic future we were promised in 1947, dammit