this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Also, let’s not forget Uranium has a finite supply. A few years ago the IAEA estimated that at high usage scenarios (which might actually be happening now), by 2040 28% of remaining supplies would be used. Depending on different factors, that could either accelerate and run out not too long after, which is even for us a pretty short time. Other estimates were thinking up to about 200 years left, at current rates, 10 years ago so indeed not taking AI etc into account.
There are 4 billion tons of uranium in the ocean
There's also a fuckton of gold in the ocean, just waiting for someone to figure out how to filter the entire ocean and pull out the individual atoms. All at a profitable price point.
Same with uranium. Which means it'll never happen.
We will have cracked fusion, mined the far side of the moon for helium3 and brought it back to terra before we crack that nut
For context; we've only mined ~200k tonnes of gold historically with an estimate ~50k tonnes left. The ocean holds 20milion tonnes, worth over $770Trillion and it's not cost effective to get it out.