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Nigeria and nuclear fusion- Part 3

By J.K. Obatala
17 November 2016   |   4:17 am
Taking genetics into account, imposes on policy makers an obligation to look beyond the foreign exchange value of the country’s minerals.
Lithium

Lithium

Taking genetics into account, imposes on policy makers an obligation to look beyond the foreign exchange value of the country’s minerals.

The real importance of lithium, in particular, is not “commercial“: But rather, the strategic, industrial and technological possibilities it provides, for present and future generations.

Lithium is essential to the operation of both fission- and fusion-powered reactors. It is also an integral aspect of nuclear weapons technology and modern energy storage systems.

Fundamental survival interests, must eventually impel policy makers onto all of these beckoning vistas: New survival horizons, where only lithium-based energy systems can ensure biological security.

Despite its strategic importance, Lithium (Li) is not rare, as such. It is the 15th most abundant element on Earth, and can be obtained from both solid minerals and saltwater.

The problem is, finding it in commercially exploitable concentrations. Being highly reactive, it combines quickly into compounds—ruling out rich, elemental lodes, comparable to gold or silver veins.

Among the countries, known to harbor large quantities, are Russia, China, Australia, Zimbabwe and the so-called “Lithium Triangle” in the Andes area of South America.

The eelement has two stable isotopes, Li-7 and Li-6—with the abundance of the latter amounting to just 7.5 percent of naturally occurring lithium.

Awareness of the metal dates back only to the early 19th century (1800s), when it was first discovered in petalite (one of two main ores, including spodumene), then isolated chemically.

But it’s been around a lot longer—since the beginning of time! Lithium was synthesized (along with hydrogen and helium) 13.8 billion years ago, during the fiery conflagration that formed the universe.

Hence it is the Mother of All Metals: Being the oldest. It’s also the lightest and least dense. Lithium would float on water, and is so soft a kitchen knife can cut through it, like a silvery cake.

Certain physicists, chemists and engineers are enamored of this element. It has distinctive chemical and physical traits that endears it to bomb makers and builders of nuclear reactors, in particular.

In fact, lithium occupies an historic and centrally important niche in the annals nuclear technology— the proposition I’ve been working up to.

It may interest you to know though, before I elaborate, that nuclear experts are not the only ones who cavort with lithium. You too carry on with Li-6 and -7, albeit in innocence. Indeed, they are your constant companions—without whom you probably wouldn’t leave home!

Energy storage units, using long-lasting and disposable lithium cells or rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, help to power a spiraling diversity of instruments, appliances and implantable devices.

The power packs that support consumer products, such as laptop computers, cellular phones and electric vehicles contain lithium-ion, while lithium batteries sustain heart pace-makers and watches.

PBS News Hour’s Vikram Mansharamani puts it this way: “The devices that allow us to function would themselves not function without our trusty portable sources of power.

“Lithium,” he continues, “is a crucial ingredient in these batteries and may one day eclipse oil as a source of geopolitical and economic power”.

Now, it is time to explain the niche, which Li-6 and Li-7 have come to occupy in the ecology of nuclear weapon and reactor technology.
History is certainly a factor: It was by splitting a lithium nucleus—not uranium or plutonium—that nuclear physicists demonstrated fission, for the first time, in 1932.
To be continued.

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