Can exploit uranium from seawater?

The solution to extract uranium from seawater is about to come true, helping ensure the future of nuclear power.

The world's oceans contain at least 4 billion tons of rare metals, but the goal of exploiting uranium from the sea is still a dream for the past four decades. The reason is due to technological difficulties and high operating costs.

In a recent report at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, Dr. Robin Rogers from the University of Alabama said that advances in technology today could help target the removal of uranium from the sea with Large numbers will become a reality in the near future. Dr. Rogers estimates that uranium can be produced from seawater at a cost of between US $ 300 and US $ 560 / 0.45kg.

Is separation of uranium from sea water a reality?

'Oceans contain uranium content with more and more uranium disintegrating in seawater. However, the difficulty is always that the concentration of this substance in seawater is very low, causing the cost of extraction to increase. Despite this, we are gradually overcoming this difficulty, " said Dr. Robin Rogers on the Daily Mail.

The technology for separating uranium from new seawater, developed in Japan, uses plastic sheets covered by compounds that can "catch" uranium atoms. Each plate is about 45m to 91m long and is placed under the sea surface from 91m to 180m. After being lifted out of the water, the plastic sheets are treated with dilute acid solution to recover uranium.

Later, the sheets will return to the water to "catch" uranium. This device can be used again and again. This increases efficiency and reduces the cost of separating uranium from seawater from previous technology.

Dr. Robin Rogers' research group is looking to use waste shrimp shells from the seafood processing industry to produce biological materials used as uranium collectors instead of plastics.

The goal of extracting uranium from the sea is to help stabilize the nuclear energy industry in the future. Because nuclear power plants are built for 60 years or more, huge amounts of uranium are needed, while onshore uranium sources are increasingly scarce.