A cure-all all the way up and down. For desalination of sea water, a giant still using the heat from a nuclear reactor, which has the primary purpose of generating electricity, uses two stones to kill one bird. Instead of the old design of light-water uranium reactors, the new designs of the Small Modular Nuclear reactors use molten salt as the coolant and the carrier of the fissionable material, with a steady output of heat energy for as long as the fuel charge lasts. This energy is being generated 24/7/365 for several years before requiring refueling, there is no chance of a “China Syndrome” catastrophic fail, and no chance of a radioactivity release. The excess heat not used for production of electricity (which would be so cheap as to make hydrogen generation by electrolysis economically feasible) would be used to make potable water out of stagnant water from almost any source, and leaving the mineral deposits behind. the minerals could then be refined into the various elements (including lithium, if you HAVE to have it anyway), but also concentrated brine which has an extraordinary number of metals, and not just sodium in solution. These various salts could be separated by differential crystallization, as the salts of various minerals precipitate at a very specific point of supersaturation in the remaining brine. Gold could even be extracted from sea water using this process.
A whole new industrial base could be built up from this method of extracting chemical elements from sea water. All it takes is imagination and determination. We probably already have access to most of the technology, it s a matter of applying it.
But we also have been hearing about this for decades. I'm just a skeptic until I see the idea become a reality. I have seen many do so in my lifetime, and I hope this is another, and that all the hype is matches with reality. But until then I throw caution to the wind. Because I have too often seen exuberance turn into issues. As the saying always goes, everything looks better on paper then it does after delivery & expansion have their input. 🙂👍