Chinese scientists have developed a way to extract uranium from seawater, Interesting engineering reported. The breakthrough could have major implications in terms of making nuclear energy less expensive and even more viable as an alternative to dirty energy sources.
Nuclear power often gets a bad rap due to the high-profile disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. However, experts say it is actually much safer than the general public believes and has the ability to generate energy without the air pollution that causes the planet to overheat and that comes from sources such as gas, oil and coal.
Another disadvantage of nuclear energy, however, is that it requires uranium, an extremely rare and non-renewable metal. A new invention from researchers at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology – an organic material that can extract uranium from seawater – has the potential to make acquiring uranium much less difficult and expensive.
Interesting engineering described the newly developed adsorbent as being “environmentally friendly, economical, easily synthesized and with impressive mechanical robustness and recyclability”.
Although seawater contains incredibly small amounts of uranium (so don’t worry about it becoming radioactive after swimming in the ocean), the good news is that there is a huge amount of seawater available and it’s not that environmentally expensive to get the your hands on it as it is to extract rock. A ton of seawater contains just 3.3 milligrams of uranium, the equivalent of extracting one gram of salt from 300,000 liters of fresh water, as Interesting Engineering said.
Advances like this and others – for example, China is also developing the world’s first “fusion-proof” nuclear reactor – point to nuclear power as a viable energy source of the future, along with wind, solar and other renewable energies.
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Other notable nuclear power projects include a nuclear power plant being built in Wyoming on the site of a decommissioned coal plant, which drastically reduces the risk of meltdowns by using liquid sodium as a coolant instead of water, and another new method developed by Virginia researchers. Technology that makes the entire process safer.
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