Four billion metric tons of uranium sit dissolved in the world’s oceans right now, roughly 1,000 times the total identified in hard-rock mines worldwide. A US startup called Fluxnium just emerged from stealth with a plan to get at it, backed by $7 million in seed funding and chemistry licensed from the US Department of Energy.
The catch: extracting that uranium currently costs more than twice the market rate, and no one has proven it works at commercial scale.
The timing matters. Yellowcake prices have risen approximately 75% over the past five years, according to US Energy Information Administration data. US policy discussions target tripling nuclear capacity by 2050, yet the country imports the overwhelming majority of its uranium from a short list of geopolitically exposed nations.
Do you think humanity, as a whole, is going to abandon flying? I certainly don’t. So the best solution is to make changes to limit the behaviors and modify the behaviors to cause less harm. Again, this is just one component of a larger solution, but its a good one to address what air travel still needs to occur.
We’re already beyond that. We’re not getting that back.