It's possible, although unlikely, that there are mineable deposits of uranium on Mars. There are trace amounts, but its unlikely that minable deposits formed.
It's possible, although unlikely, that there are mineable deposits of uranium on Mars. There are trace amounts, but its unlikely that minable deposits formed.
why is there unlikely to be mine-able uranium deposits? It's not like there's some geological process on mars that strips it away (presumably).
The geological processes, which Mars lacks, are supposed to concentrate uranium, not strip it away. The actual geochemical explanation is complicated but long story short Mars is a geologically dead planet without much water that doesn’t like to form rock that can hold uranium ore.
Uranium concentrates in felsic (high silica) rock which forms under crustal recycling on Earth - the heat at the interface between the crust and mantle allows the Fe-Mg to strip away. Water dissolving uranium then injects into the felsic rock, the uranium precipitates out, and the rock later gets pushed up higher into the crust.
Mars has neither the active geology nor seemingly enough water to allow much felsic rock to form. Satellite surveys show the surface is covered with mostly basaltic rock (low silica, high Fe-Mg) with very small pockets of felsic. The processes that form these pockets are largely unlike those formed on Earth and don’t have the same geochemistry, especially without ample water.
I just replaced my screen background with a photo from Mars with a big granitic(?)/ granodiorite(?) Boulder, surrounded by volcanic rocks. It is an amazing quandary! Fun to look at, and think - ok, how was this made!? To simplify: the Boulder: is a white rock with black crystals, whereas all the surrounding rocks are dark grey or black(look like lava.) The Boulder is somewhat round(let's say 1 meter across +-100%), has been broken at some of the edges, and rounded at others. How was it broken? Rounded, and the fact it isn't in the Chevy place judging by the surrounding rocks, HOW, did it get there? So we are looking at various igneous processes at work here. Deep and surface. Plus, transport, by water? Ice? Liquid CO2? Unknown.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/P...
It's amazing how many natural processes we have on Earth that work in our favour.
I think the implication is that uranium likely exists in low density and cannot be easily extracted without a great deal of chemical processing and disposal of waste product (rather than deposits of uranium a la natural reactors: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reac...)
I'm not an expert, but I was under the impression that while water is often involved in forming deposits of uranium ores, they can also form because of volcanic activity alone. Maybe bruce511 thinks such deposits are likely to be rare, or maybe I'm wrong.