They've even developed a system to get the job done

Aug 31, 2015 16:29 GMT  ·  By

What with climate change and global warming progressing at an alarming pace, efforts are underway to find feasible alternatives to the fossil fuels that got us into this mess to begin with. 

While some think green energy sources like wind and solar are the best way to go, others argue that nuclear power is by far the better choice.

In a recent report in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers with the US Department of Energy's Office of Science describe a novel system designed to mine oceans for uranium.

The idea is that, since our planet's land uranium resources are limited, nuclear power cannot hope to replace fossil fuels unless we can access more of this element.

The solution might be to exploit the uranium reserves of global oceans, which previous studies have shown contain much more of this element than land deposits.

“Uranium plays an important role in the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels; however, uranium resources on land are limited.”

“The oceans are estimated to contain 1,000 times as much uranium as is buried in deposits on land,” the US Department of Energy team explains in a report detailing their work.

The trouble with pulling uranium from oceans

Earth's oceans might pack thousands of times more uranium than land deposits, but the uranium they contain is present at a very low concentration and comes in the form of uranyl (UO22+), described by chemists as a water soluble yellow uranium salt.

To recover this uranium present in planetary oceans, the US Department of Energy scientists have devised a system that works by binding to uranyl, thus making it possible to pull the element out of the water.

In a series of experiments, the system, which is based on a protein that the researchers themselves created, i.e. Super Uranyl-binding Protein, was used to recover 30 to 60% of the uranyl the team added to synthetic ocean water.

True, the system is yet to be tested in real-life conditions, but the specialists think they've done a pretty good job. So much so that they're now considering using this emerging biotechnology to recover other valuable elements from tricky environments.

Protein-based system could help recover uranium from ocean water
Protein-based system could help recover uranium from ocean water

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Some think nuclear power is the best alternative to fossil fuels
Protein-based system could help recover uranium from ocean water
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