Uranium is the first radioactive element discovered by human. When mentioning the element, you may think about nuclear weapon, the cold war, and risking millions of innocent lives on the edge of extinction. However, this is only a very tiny little corner about Uranium. In fact, it is the most impressive and mysterious element in the universe, and is supporting our planet in an unexpected way. 

Radioactive elements

It is well known that radioactive elements with higher atomic numbers gradually decay into elements with lower atomic numbers until the decay products are no longer radioactive. The effect of the disappearance of uranium on this process is unknown, but it is assumed that these elements will simply skip uranium and move on to the next stage, releasing more energy (this is the assumption with the least impact on the Earth). Of course, they might also just stay in the pre-uranium stage and remain stable. This might allow a very large number of man-made elements to become natural elements, and therefore make the components of the planet versatile. Though this wouldn’t have any huge impact on our planet either. It may affect the supernovas, but as they are all far away from the earth, let’s simply ignore this either.

The development of Earth. 

Uranium is one of the few naturally occurring radioactive elements. It is widely distributed in the Earth’s crust. In fact, since 4.5 billion years ago, the decay of uranium has been providing heat to the Earth. At that time, uranium, along with other radioactive elements, was one of the main constituents of the Earth. Time elapsed, and the Earth cooled and these elements decayed, that the Earth became more suitable for life. The heat and energy released by Uranium support the relatively high temperature of the earth’s mantle, and at the same time, lifes on the planet. 

So how do the disappearing Uranium affect the earth?

There would be a drop in the Earth’s temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius, as the Earth’s internal heat source would be partially removed. 

Agriculture

The tropical regions of the planet would disappear completely: deserts, rainforests, and the savanna prairie would be eliminated, accompanied with tropical plants and animals. This will strongly affect agriculture. Fruits unique to the tropics, such as coconuts and durians, will also cease to exist, or will only exist in greenhouses. Rice will not disappear completely, but areas suitable for rice cultivation will be too small to support the global population. Therefore, wheat will replace rice as the main food crop. As a result, pasta such as bread will become more popular among people. 

For areas further north or south, people aren’t able to feed themselves very well as the temperature drops. Crops like potatoes, corn, etc. may be grown on a large scale as food in colder areas. This could partly solve the problems of food. The drop in temperature would also cause more areas of forest to degrade into grasslands that could provide help for livestock. Therefore, the supply of protein would not be a problem either. Additionally, an unfriendly environment would stimulate people to start working on agriculture-related technologies earlier. Considering all of this, food production may not have changed much compared to today, though, people may lose some of their choices.

Population

Considering our assumption about agriculture, the world’s population may not change dramatically. More changes occur in the distribution of the population: areas at higher latitudes (e.g. Russia, Canada) will have smaller populations and will be dominated by animal husbandry or potato farming. Most of the population would be concentrated within cities in the middle and lower latitudes, such as Orlando. Crops produced at higher latitudes would feed cities in areas closer to the equator. The Central American region and Southeast Asia would also be popular, and because of the milder climate there will be more people and more developed cities.

Transportation

The decreasing temperature will affect waterway transportation. Some rivers used for transportation will remain frozen for most of the year and will no longer be suitable for ship traffic, such as the Volga River in Russia, and some rivers in China that begin on the Tibetan Plateau, such as the Yangtze River, will see a significant reduction in water flow. However, these won’t have much of an impact because the northern part of Russia is already underpopulated as the temperature is low, and the Yangtze region will use trains or trucks as alternative.

The biggest impact would be the disappearance of the Arctic Ocean shipping lanes: the Arctic Ocean would undoubtedly be frozen all year round, and ships would have no way to pass through it. Given that Russia relies on the Arctic Ocean to export its oil, gas and iron ore, it may be more difficult for them to export their natural resources, and some other European countries also rely the Arctic Ocean shipping lanes to export their products, the southern shipping lanes, including the Mediterranean Sea lanes, the Suez Canal and the Malacca Straits, will become busier.

The first industrial revolution and climate change

When considering this, the disappearance of uranium may not be entirely a bad thing (though it’s still really really bad for humans). Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a massive scale. This has exacerbated the greenhouse effect. However, if the world were free of uranium, this would not necessarily be a bad thing: the greenhouse effect would make the planet warmer and people would no longer have to deal with the climate change. As a result, human do not need to consider the consequences of development of industry and productivity. However, still we have to pay for the consequences: humans may have to sacrifice coastal cities such as Shanghai and New York, because melting glaciers will rise the sea level. 

Nuclear Technology

I’m sure many of you who clicked into this post are expecting this part, but I have some bad news: the disappearance of uranium will not actually have any effect. After all, plutonium and thorium are both great nuclear fission feedstocks, right?

Just kidding. I actually thought about the same thing before I started writing this post. However, I came to realize that no other element can perform nuclear fission without uranium. Plutonium can indeed be used to produce atomic bombs, but human produced it by bombarding Uranium-238 with neutrons; Thorium-232 itself cannot be directly involved in nuclear fission, but needs to be converted into Uranium-233 before it can be involved in nuclear fission. This means that without uranium, atomic bombs and nuclear power plants would not exist. 

Nuclear fusion would still be a viable choice because it relies primarily on isotopes of hydrogen. However, the detonation of a hydrogen bomb (uncontrolled fusion) still relies on nuclear fission. Therefore, while I believe that scientists can find a way to trigger nuclear fusion, a hydrogen bomb is not likely to be realized anytime sooner than World War II. Not to mention controlled fusion, which still hasn’t been realized in the early 21st century.

The implications for humanity are significant. I will discuss this issue from both military use and civil use of nuclear power. 

Military

Without the atomic bomb, the World War II would end in 1948, not 1945. According to U.S. military’s estimation in 1945, if the two atomic bombs had failed to get Japan to surrender, U.S. forces would have to land on Japan, which would have resulted in three years of war and about one million U.S. casualties. A prolonged war requires a lot of resources, so Japan will not give up its government in China, and the outbreak of civil war in China would be delayed. In fact, a civil war in China would not break out at all because the additional three years of war brought the Chinese Nationalists enough time to completely destroy the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, China would have been a capitalist country after the war rather than a communist one.

The world after the Second World War would not change dramatically. Although there would be no more atomic bombs, the Cold War would still exist because the hydrogen bomb would still be feasible for scientists. Without the support of the Chinese Communist Party, the Soviet Union would have lost the Cold War and disintegrated much more quickly, but as scientists would finally create hydrogen bomb, the nuclear deterrence would have still existed and would have lasted for hundreds of years (hopefully). 

Civil

The disappearance of nuclear power plants would not have a particularly large impact on the world either, except in some countries. For most countries, nuclear power plants provide only a very small amount of electricity. Therefore, they can fill the gap in electricity consumption in other ways, for example, solar energy.

But some countries are not so lucky. The United States, Japan and a number of European countries, led by the UK and France, now rely on nuclear power for around 20 per cent of their total electricity generation. The disappearance of uranium force them to look for other sources of energy. The United States can generate enough electricity by utilizing fossil fuels; the UK, France and Japan can only generate electricity by importing oil and natural gas from Russia.

Of course, that’s not a bad thing. At least the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima won’t happen anymore. 

It doesn’t seem like uranium is that important at all.