Present Status of Study on Extraction of Uranium from Sea Water

Abstract

The growth rate of the energy demand in the world has been lowered recently, however, the essenciality of the development of nuclear power generation has not been changed. Because of the limited resources of terrestrial uranium, the techniques of the extraction of uranium from sea water as the practically unlimited resources of uranium have been developed in Japan and other countries like F. R. Germany, Sweden, United States and others. Many fundamental results in the above field have been accumulated as well as some design studies and cost estimations have been conducted. In the last October, the International Meeting on Recovery of Uranium from Seawater was held in Japan organized by AESJ and IAEA. At this time moment, the up-to-date status of the studies including the selection of the chemical processes, development of adsorbents, design studies and cost estimations will be reviewed.

KEYWORDS:

• uranium
• sea water
• extraction
• hydrous titanium oxide
• adsorption
• polyacrylamidoxime
• macrocyclic hexadentate
• conceptual design
• contactor system
• cost estimation