Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / The Geology of Uranium

Transcript

The Geology of Uranium · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, just a quick note before we get started today.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're really happy to say that we released our new visual audiobook, what we're calling a conversational book, that covers all of the geology of Yellowstone National Park.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a really fun exercise for us to put together, and it's now available on the web app right next to Camp Geo.
• 0:32
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• 0:34
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• 0:39
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• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Once you hit the payment page, there's a little button right next to the logo that you can use to enter the code.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's Planet Geo20 for a 20% discount.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, what's up, man?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, a lot.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say not a lot, but there's a lot that's going on in my life right now.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you're in your like your old childhood room right now, recording the scenery in the background has changed for you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my house is getting work done on it, and so I cannot record.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: We had to record, you know, we just this is what we had to do.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have the day off today.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a big day ahead of us, and my house is not suitable for recording right now.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I am at my mom and dad's house.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Your recording Man Cave booth downstairs is under construction.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it'll be done today, though.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's exciting.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is the last day of it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm in my old bedroom when I was a my childhood bedroom.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so good.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very it's interesting.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some yellow shag carpet on the ground over there.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: What do we got on the ground?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's red carpeting, actually.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's this it's the same carpeting that was there when I was a kid.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a bit of a throwback for you then.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is fun.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jesse, what do we have going on today?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are we going to talk about today?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the next one in our line of the geology of fill-in and element.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the geology of uranium, which I put this together.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I pitched this to you.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And well, we've talked a decent amount about uranium in the past.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've had our ancient nuclear reactors, ancient natural nuclear reactors episode.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about geochronology quite a bit.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we've kind of beat around the bush, I guess, about uranium and how useful it is and like details about uranium, but we haven't really hit the geology of uranium, like how it behaves out there in the the systems that we talk about in geology.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's kind of what we're going to cover, right, Chris?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, we we are, but uh, I'm gonna say as just a forewarning that the chemistry of uranium, as we started digging into this and getting ready for this episode, brought me back, and it actually brought back some nightmares of of college chemistry classes.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: You probably felt so at home.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're you're this nerdy little geochemist, you know.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: You this is the stuff you really, really get into.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So this took a bit of selling on your part to pitch this to me.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still not a hundred percent sold on this.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just I'm gonna tell you, because uh, you know, getting into the chemistry of uranium, I'm gonna tell you, to be quite honest, this brought back some some memories of college that are not all that great.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not college chemistry, uh chemistry 101 or chemistry 102, those like really kind of hard chemistry classes.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I know I you know, I'm gonna be honest, like in thinking about this, I remember vividly sitting in on chemistry classes and and just thinking, all right, I just have to do this because this if I get through this, it enables me to chase the dream of geology for me, but I never really understood the appeal of chemistry.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's be honest.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I was the exact same way, Chris.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think chemistry is like one of these things that's like math.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I it never really made sense to me.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was kind of bored by it, like doing these proofs and stuff like that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, why do I care?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, took some recipe in a chemistry lab and I made a green solution blue, like great, what the heck?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I was in grad school and I realized how amazing chemistry is and how useful it is for geology, that's when I was like all in on geochemistry, like, oh man, this is awesome.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're gonna kind of try and do today is frame it that way.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let me interrupt you a second, Jesse, because that is such a good point.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Chemistry in context is amazing.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Chemistry by itself sucks is not amazing.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not amazing.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I apologize if I'm offending anybody out there that just really, really loves chemistry, but chemistry needs to have context.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So geochemistry is amazing.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I uh and biochemistry too.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It has amazing application, but it's not taught that way hardly ever.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's just out of context and it stands alone, and then it's like, ah, yeah, well, get me through this.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're you're learning about the hammer.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're learning like how a hammer is constructed, not like how to use the hammer, right?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's way more interesting to learn how to use the hammer.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uranium.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so basically, let me give a summary as to where we're gonna go here a little bit.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about uranium as a critical mineral, and there's a little bit of a discussion around that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk then about like well, why do we care?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: What you know, why do we care so much about uranium?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, because this is a geology podcast, we're gonna get into the geochemistry of uranium.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so let's start out there because I think the interesting part about the critical minerals, and critical minerals are sort of a government-defined thing that critical means they're critical to our infrastructure, or there's some if you go back to our episode with Nadal Nasar, the critical mineral person for the USGS, we did a whole episode on this, and it's amazing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we didn't amazing personal.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of mandated by the Trump administration in the US to be on the list as a critical mineral.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was then removed under Biden by the U.S.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Geological Survey, under the argument that uranium is quote unquote a fuel mineral, and so therefore no fuel minerals can be on the critical minerals list.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this is a hot button topic, I would say.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Canada lists uranium as a critical mineral.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, I Chris, I think we've talked a little bit about nuclear power before.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think people know I'm a sort of a proponent of it, but that's not a uh that that's a people find that controversial sometimes.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like that that's that's where you're gonna go with that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're sort of a proponent of it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You are in love with nuclear power.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, give you half a chance to talk about nuclear energy, and and there goes your day.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that's true.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Time you're never gonna get back.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing to me that we've politicized an element, you know.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because really, if you think about this, it comes down to I at least I think you and I agree on this, it comes down to nuclear power, and is that considered then a green energy?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's been politicized.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: At least that's the only reason I can make out of this whole discussion or debate about uranium.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's kind of a hot button topic.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Completely agree with you on that one.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so whether it's a critical mineral or not, the United States Geological Survey and many other geological surveys have big research programs dedicated to this, to understanding uranium, finding new sources, and we're going to talk about kind of why we care about that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the main reason we should care about uranium, I guess?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a science reasons, which we've talked about geochronology, like I use uranium every day in my research lab, but there's societal reasons we should care as well.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we already touched on it, but it comes down to nuclear reactors, and nuclear reactors rely upon uranium-235.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And do you want to talk a little bit about the chain reaction that goes on inside?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should just touch on it as a review purpose.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, why don't why don't you take it away, Chris?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think you have a really good analogy for this.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have an analogy?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're ne you're the analogy king.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you're talking about.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what analogy do I use with this?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, uranium-235 is the fissionable flavor, if you will, of uranium.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is you take a neutron moving very, very, very fast.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's got to be moving at the right speed.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if it slams into the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, it quickly absorbs that neutron, and so it becomes U236 for just a really brief instant in time.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: But it's very, very unstable then.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: U236, it doesn't like that.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it flies apart into two smaller isotopes.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is that you get three more neutrons that come off.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, you get two additional neutrons that you have the one that uh got absorbed by the uranium-235, and then two more neutrons come off at that speed, and those three neutrons, if they hit uranium-235, the process repeats itself.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one neutron led to three, three leads to nine, nine lead to twenty-seven, and so on and so on, and so on.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the chain reaction of uranium-235 inside of a nuclear reactor.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, I have a real quick story about this because I just took at a visitor, uh one of my PhD supervisors was actually visiting Penn State, and I took him and my research group, all the students.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: We went to the research reactor at Penn State.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a nuclear reactor that's a research reactor at Penn State.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we went and visited this.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's amazing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, hold on, I did not know that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is unbelievable.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you gotta come when you come to visit Penn State or visit us here in Pennsylvania.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll definitely go.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're totally open.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've gone on two tours now with these people.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we walked in and you you can like stand in the room with the pool.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're just in the room of the pool, you're looking down, you could touch the water if you want to.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they don't want you to, but like it wouldn't be dangerous.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you're looking down at the reactor down there, like 20 feet down in this big pool of water, and you can see it glowing blue, like it's on.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're obviously amazed by this.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're going over, and so we go why is it blue why is it glowing blue?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean, first of all?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a radiation, uh, it has something to do with the physics of light traveling through water.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: The neutrons are traveling faster than the speed of light through water, and so it gives off so I I don't exactly understand the physics of it, but it has this kind of bluish glow when it's in the water.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the story is we go back into the control booth, and there's obviously an undergrad who's like a trainee, an undergrad trainee who's working in the reactor, and there's another guy there who's the main the main controller of the reactor at this time.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're talking, ask a bunch of questions, and he goes, the guy, the control booth guy says, Well, do you guys want to see a pulse?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of us are like, Well, yeah, that sounds fun.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's a pulse?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, it's a we'll we'll do a two-dollar pulse for you guys.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, What is a two-dollar pulse?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that a two-dollar pulse is you can turn up the reactor, basically make it go critical, where it would run away.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If it's the design of the reactor, these research reactors can't have a runaway reaction, but it's kind of pushing it in that direction.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we looked at the board and they have a count of like since 1950 how many pulses they've done, and this was like number you know, 8,500 that they've done, but just did a pulse, and so we went out in the pool, looked down, and he said, Okay, we're gonna pulse the reactor, which means we're gonna pull the control rods up really quickly, and then the reactor went.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And let it go, let it let the neutrons fly.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let it crank.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just neutrons everywhere.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he was okay.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just explain a second real quick what you just said, just so that everybody can follow?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: The control rods absorb the neutrons, and so this depends upon how much of the reaction you want to go, because we use the heat from this, you know, splitting atoms to boil water, and that turns the turbines and all that, right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so the control rods control the neutrons because the neutrons do the splitting, and so if we need less power, we put more control rods in, they absorb neutrons, take them out of commission.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: If we need more heat, we take some of the control rods out and let the reaction go a little bit.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: What you're saying is let's take the control rods out and let it rip.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So basically what they did is they just had this pulse of air that blasted a control rod up out, and these are like gravity ones, so then it kind of sits up high out of the reaction.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we go, everybody stands around the pool, and he's like, turns the lights off, he says, Okay, we're gonna count, he's gonna count down five, four, three, two, one.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: When he hits two, do not blink, because you'll miss it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're out there, we're like my PhD survivor turns to me and he goes, So this might be the dumbest thing I've ever done, standing in the pool while this reactor is gonna go super critical.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, right.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, this is the way to go.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's impossible for this to melt down because of the design.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, this thing pulsed such a bright, vibrant blue, this bright blue flash, and it was so, so cool.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, uh it's a long-winded way to say it's an amazing reaction that happens.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're using uranium.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: These rods are all uranium.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh, so a question then how long did it take to remove the control rods?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: How like he counted down from five.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: How long does it take to remove them?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they use a high pressure gas to just blast it up.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So instantaneously, and this is the pulse.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they're just instantaneously, yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you're saying then is the chain reaction went that fast?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're saying?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Instantaneously.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is amazing.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Think about nuclear bomb type thing, you know, it whole my yeah, it just goes instantaneously.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's a really, really cool story.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um that I'm I'm so glad that you brought that in.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've always wondered this how long it takes for the chain reaction to go.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Does it kind of like is this this kind of crescendo?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you're saying, no, it's not.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's this happens really, really fast.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is unbelievable.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So then he instantly takes them out and then he puts them right back in.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then right is that this is the the design of the reactor is such that when the reactor gets hot, it self-regulates.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it has it's a I think it's a zirconium hydride uranium.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: The rods are zirconium, hydrogen, and uranium, and the hydrogen heats up and it starts to it moderates the neutrons.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when it gets hot, the neutrons get absorbed more and they stop fissioning.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, this thing pulses really high in energy and then it it it automatically brings itself back down.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this would not be good for a power reactor, or this would not be a good, for instance, bomb design because it self-regulates.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It has nothing to do with the critical mass of the uranium then that's in the reactor, or is that why it won't go out of control?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the part where nuclear reactor physics are beyond me.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly how much it has to do, but this particular design of the reactor with I don't remember how many control rods or how many rods they have, and they have five control rods amongst, I think, 60 fuel rods, but it's amazing.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see these this is uranium.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is uranium plus zirconium plus hydrogen on these rods, and that that's what it's made of.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if I was not awake before this discussion, I am awake now.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically like you had your third cup of coffee over there.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am so excited.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is absolutely amazing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you come, we're gonna do a tour, and maybe we'll get them to do a two-dollar pulse for us.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, what's a five-dollar pulse?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is that possible?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the two dollar is um another interesting story, is because back during the Manhattan Project, they used all these very common words to mean fancy physics things because if somebody intercepted, you know, a piece of paper where they're writing things on it, they wanted the word to be to seem like a invoice chart, like a financial sheet.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they used dollar means the number of critical supercritical neutrons.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the number of excess neutrons in the system that create this supercriticality.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so two dollar means there's two more than normal.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you described it as like there's like excess neutrons above the normal reaction.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like so Yeah, anyway, above the critical point.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So critical is just self-sustaining.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is supercritical, so there's two more neutrons per fission than the supercritical version.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think I explained that right.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We'd have to go and talk to the nuclear physicist to actually get the two dollar false definition.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very cool story.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think pretty much everybody here learned something then.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I that's that's amazing.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, we're gonna go do a tour when you come to Penn State.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: But this is how nuclear reactors work.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And nuclear power reactors globally produce about 400 gigawatts electric.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and the reason it's called gigawatts electric is because they produce more energy.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The nuclear reactor is producing more energy, but the electric power out of that is 400 gigawatts, and they require 67,000 tons of uranium per year to keep those operational.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a lot of uranium.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a lot of electricity?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: But we got to put that maybe in perspective.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: 400 gigawatts.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good uh that's a good question, Chris.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So one gigawatt of electricity is equivalent to 333 wind turbines and a hundred million LEDs.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some funny, there's some funny like ways you could do this.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: 2,000 Corvettes, roughly 1.3 million horses.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's some all these funny little things about how to define a gigawatt.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's that's one how many how many light bulbs did you say?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was one a hundred million LEDs.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one gigawatt.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's one gigawatt.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's amazing.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you have in here this thing about small modular reactors.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk about that a second, real quick?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: What is a small modular reactor and why are they important?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe in bringing us down to lower carbon or zero carbon.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: This the argument goes that big nuclear reactors like the ones there's a power nuclear reactor near you in Michigan.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's one near me.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I live really close to Three Mile Island, which is no longer a nuclear reactor.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: They got turned off in 2015.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But these big nuclear reactors, they're like custom built, each one's different, each site is different, they're huge, there's all sorts of regulations, obviously, and each one is kind of a custom job.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: The idea with the small modular ones is you make them smaller, and then you can have them be kind of mass-produced, and you can stack them together.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you could have one small modular reactor at some remote, you know, mine site, or you can have 15 at like a production scale energy factory.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the idea is to sort of make them plug and play a little bit more, and there's a bunch of new companies kind of focusing on those things.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of a rough summary.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Many of them rely on uranium.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Many of the designs still rely on uranium, and 43% of the world's uranium is currently mined in Kazakhstan.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: The rest comes from a bunch of different countries.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Canada's a big producer of this.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a single mine in Canada that produces 10% of the world's uranium.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Cigar Lake, and we'll talk just briefly about that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a few countries that dominate the production of uranium, hence this sort of discussion about criticality.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a critical mineral or not?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because anytime the supply chain is like sensitive to disturbance, that becomes a potentially for an important mineral to have resources.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's move into Jesse talking about how rare uranium is in the crust.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, where do we find this?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move into that a second.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it is not very abundant in the crust, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we can establish that we're talking about like 2.8 parts per million.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that means if you take uh you know a million elements in the Earth's crust, only 2.8 of them are going to be uranium atoms.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's pretty small.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That obviously then talking about how much uranium is consumed.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about that earlier with the whole 400 gigawatts of power produced, and it takes 67,000 plus tons of uranium per year, but it's in small concentrations in the Earth's crust.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's obviously then a potential problem.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you know, your average granite has about that much.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: The continental crust is roughly granite in composition, so it has you know three to five parts per million.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a little Geiger counter, I've done this in some public talks, you know, you can hold your Geiger counter next to a granite and it'll detect decay.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's most of it's coming from uranium, a little bit from potassium, maybe, but a lot of that's uranium.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is background radiation there coming from uranium.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or what we call ore, O R E is higher concentration.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: What he's talking about, and an ore is a rock or a mineral that has enough of an element so that we can make money by mining for that element out of it.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, what is what are some of the grades of ore where we talk about uranium?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are the concentrations relative to background stuff?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So a low grade ore, in other words, one that's not, you know, it's not the most desirable thing, but it's still something that we can make money on.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about it has about 0.1% uranium in it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, about a thousand parts per million.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas a high grade ore, this highly desirable, you know, make a lot of money off this stuff, we're talking about two percent concentration, which is about twenty thousand parts per million.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to ask you, how does it get to be that concentrated geologically?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can we can we talk about that?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that am I jumping the gun?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, before we get to that, I think we we should unfortunately go back to high school chemistry or college chemistry and introduce just two terms.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, if if you'll allow me, let's just talk about two terms.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is oxidation state.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an important one.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about that.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And solubility, that's another term.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is that okay, Chris?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is that are we bringing back flashbacks from college chemistry here with these two?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it doesn't make me feel good.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: It really doesn't.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have very interesting emotions going on right now.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh first he brought me up really high by talking about this reactor at Penn State, and now we're gonna go down to a really low valley here to talk about chemistry and you know which one you want to start on electrons.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's start with let's talk about the oxidation states and the amount of electrons that uranium is capable of losing, because this is actually very impressive and amazing.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't see this a lot in basic chemistry.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's right.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So oxidation state, you know, we've talked about cations and anions before.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Cations are positive and anions are negative.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've talked about this stuff all positive.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not positive, it's positive.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do we say it positive?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's positive.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's right.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like a cat.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like a cat.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So uranium ends up being a cation.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uranium can have oxidation state, just means what is the charge of the ion?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is it negative or positive?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's negative, how negative?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: If it's positive, how positive?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uranium can have two oxidation states, and that means it can have two different charges.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: One is four plus and one is six plus.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important for the concentration.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: How does uranium get concentrated in deposits in the geology of uranium?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So four plus and six plus are the two oxidation states we're going to be dealing with here.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: You might be sitting there thinking, wait a second.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we talk about in basic chemistry classes like iron, for instance.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Iron oxidizes, it goes iron two plus, and then it goes iron three plus.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's very common for elements to lose two electrons, one electron, or maybe even three electrons, but we're talking about losing six electrons in one of the oxidation states for uranium.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's a little bit mind-blowing to be honest.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, it is anyway.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to remember where is uranium on the periodic table.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about atomic number 92.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it has 92 protons, which means a neutral atom of uranium has 92 electrons.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about then many, many, many energy levels that are involved here where the electrons reside.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so because this is such a heavy element and it's such a big atom, it's capable of losing more electrons than normal elements that are more common anyway.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about this before.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does it get to six plus?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's interesting.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we looked up the electron orbital shell configuration.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you go back to high school chemistry, remember that there's like different orbital shells that the electrons can be in, like P and S and all these ones.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the electron configuration is crazy for uranium because there are so many shells.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's 92 electrons out there in this huge cloud.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So no wonder it can lose a couple off the edges and not be an unhappy atom.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uranium can be six plus or four plus.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, soluble is another thing, another term that we should just quickly define.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Soluble means will a fluid pick it up is really kind of what it means.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Will the thing if it's soluble dissolve in a fluid?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: If it's soluble, it will dissolve.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: If it's insoluble, it will not dissolve.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or if it's soluble, it'll exist in the fluid.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it's insoluble, it will importantly precipitate out of the fluid.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It'll kind of become a crystal out of the fluid.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can work this both ways.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let me just so fluid can just pick this up and fluid can drop stuff depending on the soluble or insoluble.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: But the bottom line is that uranium is very soluble.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's why this is important, and that's why it has the ability to concentrate in certain geologic settings.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the key point.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: This oxidation state, there's a difference in solubility between the two.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uranium six plus is very soluble in water, in all sorts of fluids, the water-based fluids.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uranium four plus is not at all soluble.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So six plus happy in water, four plus unhappy in water.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really the key to all of uranium concentration in ores.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Jesse.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then talking about solubility, we need to, I think, talk about where this then happens in a geoscience or a geology setting.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where is uranium gonna concentrate in a fluid?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hit that real quick?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, Chris, let's break that up into two parts here.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's one which is kind of plate tectonic scale stuff.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where is this happening on Earth, sort of in a in a general sense?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's one that we can talk about or formation, which is kind of a more local specific region or a local specific process.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is subduction zones.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there is, as we've talked about before, you know, when an oceanic plate goes down, it has a lot of water bound up in the minerals in the oceanic crust.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that water is the key to producing these beautiful volcanoes along subduction zones.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Mount Shasta that you love is produced by fluid coming off of the downgoing slab.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: That fluid goes into the mantle and melts the mantle.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll point everybody to our Camp Geo conversational textbook because we have a whole chapter on plate tectonics and a bunch of episodes on this process and some really cool visuals that explain exactly what's going on here.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, first link in your show notes, go to that if you want to learn more about this process.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the gist of it is basically as subduction happens, water gets wrung out of this subducting slab.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: It gets driven off, it rises up into the mantle, very hot mantle there, but it's it's not melted.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But the addition of hot water, this kind of salty brine hot water, stimulates melting.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: It lowers the melting point of the minerals.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we brought myself back into comfort zone, Chris.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we have now.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: We've got happy grace.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're talking about subduction and plant tectonics and mount.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: You even brought in Mount Shasta.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we're I'm back to being happy.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's basically what's going on.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this will make you happy or not, Chris.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the uranium in Mount Shasta, because it's this process, because there's fluid involved in the production of the lavas that come out of Mount Shasta, there's more uranium in there than there would be otherwise if there was no fluid.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you compare, uh we don't really talk about absolute concentrations of uranium, but if you compare, for instance, uranium to another element that's kind of similar, uranium to thorium, or uranium to uterbium, a rare earth element or something, there'll be more uranium in the Shasta volcanic rocks than there will be in, for instance, the Pikes Peak Batholith that we collected, we collected a bunch of rocks around Pikes Peak and we hiked around Pikes Peak in Colorado because that's not a subduction zone magma.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So anytime there's fluid involved in the production of magma, uranium will be enriched, and therefore uranium's like a great tracer of subduction zones back in time.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we brought that back to plate tectonics and subduction zones and how you can concentrate uranium.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: What about now these ores?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: How does it get super concentrated?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a good transition then into that?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's and this is kind of the end stage or the last thing we're kind of bringing it all together in this episode.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked about uranium six plus being carried by fluids really easily, but we also talked about the fact that you can have anything in a fluid and it can drop out, it can become insoluble.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Chris, back to the high school chemistry or the college chemistry classes, you probably did this, you like super saturated a liquid with sugar or something, and then cool it down, drop a crystal in it, and it it all just starts to crystallize, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: That sugar or salt or whatever crystal you're making becomes insoluble and starts to crystallize out.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the process that typically generates uranium ores.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, hold on.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let me interrupt you a second.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this is how pegmatites form, okay?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: A super saturated, you know, watery solution, okay, and these crystals get really big really fast.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we did an earlier episode on pegmatites.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you then, so uranium concentrated ore deposits, are they associated with pegmatites then?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, not necessarily.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: think about like where fluids are in the crust.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked about this before.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fluids are kind of everywhere.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can have magmatic fluids that are coming off of magmas that form pegmatites, but there's like water circulating around through all of the sedimentary rocks underneath your feet in Michigan, underneath my feet in Pennsylvania.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's fluids everywhere.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And fluids will go around and they'll scavenge uranium.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: If there's uranium four plus in a rock, the fluid will hit out, it'll change it to a six plus oxidation state, it'll pick it up in the water and carry it away.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: So these fluids that are flowing through rocks have uranium in them in the six plus oxidation state.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: If that fluid changes composition, becomes more quote unquote reducing, meaning it'll add more electrons to the elements, the ions in the solution, then uranium can go from six plus to four plus, and then it's insoluble.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: It wants to be out of the fluid as fast as possible.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way this happens is the way I think about this at least is we often think of what are called redox barriers or changes in the oxidation state.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So like a barrier that changes the chemistry of the fluid.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got this fluid flowing through a sandstone, it's super happy, it's oxidizing, it's picking up uranium along the way.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: That fluid then flows into something like a shale with a ton of organic matter.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that organic matter is really reducing, the decomposition of that creates this reducing area.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: All that fluid will continue flowing through there, but the uranium hits it and goes to four plus and gets dumped out of solution.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there, this is kind of a conveyor belt of this happening where over millions of years you'll have fluids flowing through there, dropping off uranium, dropping off uranium, dropping off uranium, and it gets concentrated over time.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's often how this happens.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, real quick, then, uh and we'll wrap up this episode.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is it associated with shale?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then you use shale as an example of a reducing environment.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is uranium associated with that?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it can be.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the southwestern United States, so there's a bunch of uranium deposits.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: We were just talking about meandering streams the last couple episodes here, Chris.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sediment deposit that used to be a meandering stream, you'll have like places where there's an old stream bed channel that has a bunch of organic material, and then above it you'll have a stream channel that has a bunch of sand on it.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you can get these really complicated patterns of sediment deposition in an ancient meandering stream environment.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a place where you can get a pile of organic matter that's not a shale, it's just like somewhere the stream dropped off a bunch of sticks and leaves, and that can be a place where this uranium gets super concentrated.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: It can also be magmatic gases, can be reducing.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if sandstone fluid is flowing through and it hits an area where there's like a magma chamber, it can dump off a bunch of uranium as well there.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: We did an earlier episode on radon in your house, in your homes, okay?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And radon comes from the decay of uranium, it's one of the steps along the way, which is how it can accumulate.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So is if your house is built in clay, which is it's like shale, okay, it's a red it's got to be reducing then kind of material.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Will uranium concentrate then in those kinds of areas?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then does that make homes more susceptible?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that why the geology of Yeah, I think I know what you're asking.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I and it's kind of yes and no, I suppose.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uranium is going to be concentrated somewhere, and then like the radon is is uh more of a modern process, like you know, radon will happen over years, whereas this uranium concentration process happens over a much, much longer time frame, so hundreds of thousands of years.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this can also happen with unconformities, Chris.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have talked about unconformities before where you've got ancient old basement gneisses, metamorphic rocks, and then right on top of it, sediments.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: That barrier can be a oxidizing above it, reducing below it the fluids, the rock types can be very different above it, the chemistry, so that fluids can flow through the sediment on top, they hit that unconformity, and all of a sudden all the uranium gets dumped out.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of them the cigar like deposit in Canada, where I said 10% of the world's uranium is mined, the ore there has 20% uranium in it.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: 20% that's 200,000 parts per million.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 20%, that's that's an astronomical amount of uranium.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of unconformity is it?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a non-conformity?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is it igneous and metamorphic basement rocks?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, igneous and metamorphic basement rocks with a with a big sedimentary basin on top of it.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Quick review then.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you have these really, really deeply formed rocks, granites, metamorphic rocks, and igneous rocks.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then over time they get brought to the surface.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so all the rocks that were above these deeply formed metamorphic and igneous rocks is gone.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have renewed deposition, much younger material on top of them, and that knife-like kind of razors contact between the deeply formed rocks, old stuff, precambrian basement stuff, and the new sediments on top.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's an unconformity, and it's a gap in time, it's this missing rock record.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you're saying that zone right there is where uranium can get dumped off and concentrated, and that's what happened with Cigar Lake, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you have all these fluids flowing through the sandstones above this unconformity, the younger rocks on top of the unconformity, they're picking up uranium six plus, and they're happy, and then they hit the unconformity and there's reducing fluids in there.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: The basement gneisses have a very different fluid composition, and the uranium will convert from six plus to four plus and get dropped out right at that boundary.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how these things are typically forming.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: So back to throwback to high school chemistry class, redox reactions actually do have an application, everybody.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: They actually are important and which is the same.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Which is just turning green solutions blue.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually controlling cryptocurrencies and where uranium deposits are and where other many other deposits are formed as well.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: First the uranium has to be oxidized and then it needs to be reduced, and there's your redox reaction.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful application right there.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good one.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Chemistry is interesting when applied to geology.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: When applied, that's right.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: When just when applied to anything, then it can be interesting.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Chris, what do you think?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we cover it there.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wrap.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions, don't hesitate to hit us up, email us, uh, let us know what you think.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can send us an email at planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Go to our website, planetgeocast.com.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, like we said before, if you want to learn all the basics of geoscience, want to learn about plate tectonics and how the mantle is melting beneath the seduction zone, go to CampGeo, our conversational textbook for the geosciences.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first link in the show notes.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Peace.