Nuclear Energy Revolution: Physicists Discover Virtually Limitless Fuel Source

Chinese scientists have developed a revolutionary method of extracting nuclear fuel directly from the ocean using candle wax.

Physicists from China have made a breakthrough in nuclear energy. They have developed a new method for extracting uranium from seawater using candle wax.

This method could revolutionize nuclear energy, as it opens up a virtually unlimited source of fuel. The study was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, writes Interesting Engineering.

Currently, nuclear power plants use uranium to generate electricity. Scientists have calculated that the uranium reserves in the bowels of the Earth are approximately 7.6 million tons.

This means that this source of nuclear fuel will last for approximately another 100 years. At the same time, calculations show that the Earth’s oceans contain approximately 4.5 billion tons of uranium.

Such a huge reserve of nuclear fuel could provide the entire world with nuclear energy for several thousand years.

But extracting uranium from seawater is very difficult. Uranium is present in very low concentrations in the ocean, making it difficult to extract. Now, Chinese physicists have created a new, efficient and cost-effective method for extracting uranium from seawater.

To do this, the scientists created special beads with a high absorption coefficient. This material was created from a dissolved polymer called polyamidoxime (it attracts metals in water) and melted candle wax.

After cooling and removing the wax, the remaining material was ground into porous hydrogel particles. These particles were then encapsulated in alginate-polyacrylic acid, resulting in beads with a diameter of 3 mm.

The physicists tested their balls in both real and simulated sea conditions and got good results. Over 15 days, 10 liters of regular seawater yielded 4.79 milligrams of uranium per gram of balls. In simulated seawater, this figure increased to 8.23 ​​milligrams of uranium per gram of balls.

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Further experiments showed that the beads could extract uranium from seawater with efficiencies ranging from 95.9% to 99.5%.

A new method for extracting uranium from seawater using inexpensive materials suggests that the technology could, on an industrial scale, provide humanity with the vast amounts of nuclear fuel needed to generate electricity from nuclear power plants.

While nuclear power plants are not entirely clean energy sources because of the waste they create, they are still better than fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

Thermonuclear energy can be considered truly clean energy, for the creation of which the same process is needed that allows the Sun to live. But so far physicists have not achieved success in obtaining thermonuclear energy and it is not yet known when it will be produced on a large scale.