If anything, we were purifying the ocean.
This only shows a fifty by one hundred meter facility operated by Japan. We had over three square miles of collector surface operating, and like the Japanese, we found a lot of good stuff.
Ah yes, killing two birds with one stone: getting much needed uranium and purifying the planet's water.
But back to my hypothetical question: if one were to drink the desalinized water before we extracted the trace elements of Uranium, would our urine glow in the dark?