 | DrumBeat: September 22, 2008 | The Oil Drum | How Much Will Gustav and Ike Affect Gas Supplies? An Update. |  |
| 7th ASPO International Conference: Barcelona | The Oil Drum: Europe | Paulson and Bernanke ratchet up the blackmail talk | |
210 comments on Mining the Oceans: Can We Extract Minerals from Seawater?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
210 comments on Mining the Oceans: Can We Extract Minerals from Seawater?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Editors
Contributors
Peak Oil Primers
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
Vital Trivia
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
David,
Your link says 3-4 ppb on p. 27, not ppm. This is in agreement with Ugo's table. On the other had, that figure is not better in any sense than what Ugo has given.
Chris
Sorry for the confusion - in any case, the point is that thorium is 3 times as abundant as uranium in the crust and seawater, if the decimal places would behave themselves.
Of course, no research has been done on the practicality of extracting thorium from seawater, as it is so cheap and abundant. if we do need to at some time in the future, decades away at least, at first blush it would appear that the economics of extraction and the EROI would be several times better than Ugo has suggested, even without assuming advanced burning technologies.
David,
I see the difficulty now. No, thorium is much less soluble than uranium: http://www.marscigrp.org/ocpertbl.html
Chris
Thanks for setting me straight on that Chris.
Scratch seawater thorium!
Good job there is plenty on land! ;-)