fishes

Building a nuclear power plant costs a fortune. It is estimated that between about 24,000 and 60,000 million, depending on the characteristics of the plant. However, China has taken the lead in this race and account with 56 nuclear reactors, as well as almost another thirty under construction. It takes half as long to build a plant and it is cheaper, which puts them in the race to be the greatest nuclear power by 2030. But these plants need to ‘eat’, and China has realized that it has to get uranium from wherever. His latest invention is a metamaterial that fishes that uranium in the sea. Prevailing need. Being a powerhouse in renewables is not enough for a China that needs energy both to satisfy its population and its industry and, above all, its data centers. With his Big Tech thrown into the roboticsthe chip creation and the artificial intelligence, all the energy It is welcome to dump it into the grid, but as we say, a nuclear power plant needs fuel. They need a lot, a lot of uraniumand the problem is that their mines do not produce enough. It is estimated that, in 2023, production was only 1,700 tons. In 2024 they imported 22,000 tons and, if they want to continue at that pace, they need more. They have found important reserves in Ordosbut they also want to exploit the sea. The oceans have uranium. It is estimated that there are about 4.5 billion tons of it, but it is found in an extremely low concentration of just three micrograms per liter. Due to the vastness of the ocean, there is a thousand times more uranium in the seas than in known land reserves and China wants to apply the “whoever extracts it first, keeps it.” The metamaterial. For that, the Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, presented A few days ago a peer-reviewed study detailed a metamaterial that, in essence, is like a sponge for hunting uranium. It is extremely small, just two micrometers in diameter (much thinner than a human hair). The ‘device’ is a metal-organic framework (MOF) micromotor that moves autonomously in two ways. When exposed to small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, it travels at about seven micrometers per second. When exposed to light, it doubles that speed. According to the researchersby moving passively, is more efficient and environmentally friendly than other materials. Uranium as prey. But… fishing? According to the investigation, in laboratory tests they achieved that each gram of material captured up to 406 milligrams of uranium. It is an amount that may seem ridiculous, but the idea is to have swarms full of these uranium ‘sponges’ hunting in unison. The researchers point out that, in the tests, they noticed patterns reminiscent of hunting, with the swarm of sponges chasing the uranium particles. According to them, the application of the metamaterial goes beyond uranium fishing and could be used to recover other strategic elements such as rubidium and cesium. These are alkaline elements that are very valuable in advanced navigation technologies, electronics, ion propulsion or atomic clocks. In short: like uranium, it is a very valuable element in technology, defense and the aerospace industry. Work to go. However, although the laboratory results are promising, the Qinghai researchers’ work has important challenges to overcome. Micromotors, for example, are in their early stages of development and also ensure that high-salinity environments limit system performance. They are not the only ones. For now, this uranium-hunting sponge is a successful proof of concept, but it will take a lot of work before it can be applied to the real world. Now, China is promoting not only its nuclear programbut everything that has to do with high technology and strategic elements, and the one from the Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes is not the only uranium-fishing MOF metamaterial that we have known recently. The Frontiers Science Center for Rare Isotopes at Lanzhou University is also developing a similar concept capable of absorbing up to 588 milligrams of uranium per gram of material. In the end, the idea of ​​fishing for uranium is not new, since Japan began developing the technology in the 80s and other countries are developing the technologybut with a China that, esteemwill need 40,000 tons of uranium by 2040, it is not strange that they are the ones taking giant steps to get uranium out from under the stones. Images | Esin Üstün, RobertoUderio In Xataka | Much of the world economy right now consists of Google and Amazon buying GPUs: 95% are idle