Using a new collection method, scientists at Stanford University were able to allocate three times more uranium from the ocean over the 11-hour period than was possible before. This method can be an environmentally friendly alternative to the current methods of mining uranium and will make nuclear energy a more attractive energy option.
Developing the ocean
Let's face it. Nuclear power will not go anywhere in the near future. The International Atomic Energy Agency even predicts that the total production of nuclear energy will increase by 68 percent over the next 15 years. And aside from the debate over whether nuclear power is in itself a good alternative to fossil fuels, the extraction of its main ingredient is never friendly to the environment.
This ingredient, uranium, is a highly radioactive isotope that can be used to boil water and create steam. This steam is further commonly used to generate electricity. There are about 450 nuclear power plants in the world that use uranium, through which about 60,000 tons of heavy metal passes each year. This is a fairly common element, but the main issue is that uranium is extracted from the explosion of giant holes in the earth's crust and the subsequent extraction of metal from the formed scraps.
To remedy this process, a group of scientists from Stanford University in California developed a better solution. The group persistently sought environmentally friendly alternatives to uranium mining, and therefore developed a method of extracting the resource directly from the ocean. The results of their work were published in Nature.
Believe it or not, there is a lot of uranium in the oceans of the Earth. The problem is in the level of concentration: it is very low. "Concentrations are tiny, one grain of salt per liter of water," says Yee Cui, a Stanford researcher. "But the oceans are so big that if we can extract these trace amounts cost-effectively, deliveries will be endless."
When uranium comes in contact with oxygen in the ocean, it forms a uranyl compound. Researchers plan to collect huge reserves of it, using amidoxine, a compound that pulls only uranyl from water. Amidoxine is coated with a pair of carbon electrodes that can accumulate giant amounts of uranyl.
The scientists tested their method and found that they were able to extract three times more uranyl in the 11-hour period, when compared with their previous method, when only the amidoxine-coated brush was used.
Atomic viability
Although this study shows how feasible it may be to collect uranium, it is necessary to conduct many more studies so that these methods can be applied massively. Unfortunately, it is now much easier to extract uranium from the earth than from the ocean.
In addition, disputes continue as to whether nuclear power is a good alternative to fossil fuels. Although this process is carbon-free, converting uranium into electricity creates a lot of harmful waste, which is difficult to get rid of. Accidents at nuclear power plants are also impossible to prevent - we all remember the recent case at Fukushima.
If we discard sentimentality and strictly look at carbonless alternatives to energy production, nuclear power does not seem like a bad choice if we can mitigate its shortcomings. Well, at least we know that research is under way on how to rid us of harmful waste once and for all.
The article is based on materials .
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