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Uranium: The Metal of Tomorrow |
 This
is a really cool infographic that packs in a lot of good statistics
about uranium. Beginning with its initial discovery in 1789 by Martin
Klaproth (who named the element after the planet Uranus), uses ranging
from tinting glass to nuclear power to nuclear medicine are diagrammed
in chronological order. Did you know that this 92nd entry in the
Periodic Table
of the Elements is, as far as known today, 500x more abundant on
Earth than gold, or that 13% of the world's electricity is currently
supplied by nuclear reactors that exploit the stuff? A ton of Uranium
can produce 16,000x as much energy as a ton of coal, with no greenhouse
gas emissions. Sure, the chart is ultimately meant to promote nuclear
energy, but aside from a potential catastrophe like a power plant core
meltdown or a tsunami washing nuclear material out to sea (if you are
dumb enough to build one in a known vulnerable area), you have to admit
it is by far the best option economically. Contemporary construction
techniques for light water reactors that extract more use from uranium
rods, located in areas vetted based on modern geological knowledge far
from large population centers, practically eliminates the chance of
an incident. Terrorism by religious fanatics is by far the greatest
hazard. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia (in that order) are now the
world's largest suppliers of uranium, with the U.S. supplying a mere
3%. Australia has by far the largest known reserves - it practically
glows in the dark. The folks at
Visual Capitalist cooked up the gigantic 890x13,571-pixel JPEG file
weighing in at 2,712,221 bytes - as heavy in bandwidth requirements
as the element it portrays. <click
for full-size image>
Posted August 14, 2013
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