Agency.The solution for a post-carbon future may lie in sea water, which contains trace amounts of the radioactive metal Uranium. It can become a potential source to power cities for thousands of years.Uranium from sea water can be a viable source for nations that lack uranium mines to harness the potential of nuclear power. Traces of Uranium exists in sea water but all previous efforts to extract that critical quantity of ingredient for nuclear have failed to make the project financially viable. But recent researches have resulted in breakthrough that may bring dream to source uranium from sea water closer to reality.
In seawater, Uranium chemically combines with oxygen to form positively charged ions called uranyl. The Stanford team, Building on years of prior research, refined a technique that involves dipping plastic fibers containing a uranyl-attracting compound called amidoxime in seawater. When the strands become saturated with the ions, the plastic is chemically treated to free the uranyl, which can be refined for use in reactors – much like one does with ore. By tinkering with different variables, the researchers were able to create a fiber that captured nine times as much uranyl as previous attempts without becoming saturated. Sending electrical pulses down the fiber collected even more uranyl ions.
“Concentrations are tiny,on the order of a single grain of salt dissolved in a litre of water,”said Yi Cui, a materials scientist and co-author of a paper in Nature Energy. “But the oceans are so vast that if we can extract these trace amounts cost effectively, the supply would be endless.” Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former U.S. secretary of energy who championed seawater extraction research before he left the Department of Energy for Stanford.