[ceejayoz]

> The brine came from the ocean.

Sure, and enriched uranium comes from the ground, but that doesn't mean it's safe to dump it back in after the enrichment process!

> So just dilute it back to close to ambient salinity using municipal waste water…

Wouldn't it generally be easier to process that municipal waste water, as is already fairly common?

[Joker_vD]

> Sure, and enriched uranium comes from the ground

Uranium can also come from the ocean water (there is, apparently, quite a lot of it in there, relatively speaking). Japan experimented with the technology in the nineties, but it really was much cheaper to just mine it from the ground, so they abandoned it.

[somenameforme]

It's about 3 parts per billion. Uranium is about $85/pound, so you'd need to be able to completely process/extract about 40 million gallons of saltwater for $85 to break even. The real cost there is orders of magnitude higher. It's one reason the claim about the Earth having vast amounts of uranium is quite disingenuous. The amount of cost efficient accessible uranium is only enough to last ~1 century at current consumption rates. If nuclear energy scaled up significantly, we'd run out in a matter of decades if not less, or we send the price of uranium skyrocketing and the price arguments would need to be significantly adjusted.

[numpad0]

Japan is also barred from doing own enrichment, being a non-nuclear state. Though, there nevertheless is a dormant set of requisite facilities.

[redsocksfan45]

You're wrong. Japan does do their own enrichment, 150k SWUs at Rokkasho with plans to bring that up to 500k SWUs a year soon. If they chose to make.bombs instead of fuel, they could make dozens a year.

[numpad0]

That's the dormant plant. Rokkasho-mura plant is officially incomplete for decades, doing tests and upgrades without actual production.

If you think otherwise and you're not wrong, and I think you ARE not mistaken since this isn't the first time someone other than myself mentioned it here, that means they're making bombs because we in Japanese public aren't told about it. There has only been just some routine commentaries from local mayors at most.

[yorwba]

I think you might be confusing the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (not yet operational, intended for plutonium extraction from spent fuel) and the Rokkasho Uranium Enrichment plant, which has been running at 75 tSWU/year (I think that should be kSWU or tSW) since 2023-08-24 https://www.jnfl.co.jp/ja/business/about/uran/daily/enrichme... 112.5 tSWU/year since 2025-06-26 https://www.jnfl.co.jp/ja/business/about/uran/daily/enrichme... and 150 tSWU/year since 2025-11-20 https://www.jnfl.co.jp/ja/business/about/uran/daily/enrichme...

It's a bit weird though that they have a graph of tons of uranium hexafluoride shipped that shows the last shipment in 2018 and nothing since then.

[pfdietz]

They also have a large stockpile of reactor grade plutonium. Not the best material for bombs, but workable.

[SoftTalker]

The analogy would be if you "un-enrich" it. Then it's safe. Or at least no worse than when you took it out of the ground.

[ceejayoz]

> The analogy would be if you "un-enrich" it.

But you're doing that with the same water you're trying to make in the first place!

[SoftTalker]

You could just dilute it using fresh seawater, if you used enough and (maybe) spread it over a wider area. The amount of water people need for drinking is a relative drop in the ocean.

[ceejayoz]

Brine doesn't necessarily behave the way you imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinicle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_pool

[jaggederest]

Blue Planet video of a brinicle, content warning for kind of horrifying death of sea creatures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAupJzH31tc

[ianthehenry]

And a Blue Planet II video of a brine pool, stronger content warning for much more horrifying death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuVpNYrKPY

[threwrfaway]

You can dilute the brine in a facility before disposing.

[ceejayoz]

Go on. With what?

[wlesieutre]

With fresh water, we’ll get it from desalinization! Hey wait a second…

[turkeyboi]

Enriched uranium is perfectly safe to dump but it would be stupid to do so. Fission products are nasty but uranium itself is not, comparatively.