
This first gram of yellowcake was produced from uranium captured from seawater with modified yarn. Chien Wai and colleagues at LCW Supercritical Technologies produced the yellowcake, a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production.
Credit: LCW Supercritical Technologies
Yarn-like material collects largest amount of uranium to date
For the first time, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater.
“This is a significant milestone,” said Gary Gill, a researcher at PNNL, a Department of Energy national laboratory, and the only one with a marine research facility, located in Sequim, Wash. “It indicates that this approach can eventually provide commercially attractive nuclear fuel derived from the oceans — the largest source of uranium on earth.”
That’s where LCW, a Moscow, Idaho clean energy company comes in. LCW with early support from PNNL through DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, developed an acrylic fiber which attracts and holds on to dissolved uranium naturally present in ocean water.
“We have chemically modified regular, inexpensive yarn, to convert it into an adsorbent which is selective for uranium, efficient and reusable,” said Chien Wai, president of LCW Supercritical Technologies. “PNNL’s capabilities in evaluating and testing the material, have been invaluable in moving this technology forward.”
Wai is a former University of Idaho professor who, along with colleague Horng-Bin Pan, was involved in earlier DOE-funded research to develop materials in order to increase domestic availability of uranium, which is mostly imported into the U.S. currently.
Wai founded LCW and, with funding from the Small Business Innovation Research program, worked out a new approach to adsorb the uranium onto a molecule or ligand that is chemically bound to the acrylic fiber. The result is a wavy looking polymer adsorbent that can be deployed in a marine environment, is durable and reusable.
The adsorbent material is inexpensive, according to Wai. In fact, he said, even waste yarn can be used to create the polymer fiber. The adsorbent properties of the material are reversible, and the captured uranium is easily released to be processed into yellowcake. An analysis of the technology suggests that it could be competitive with the cost of uranium produced through land-based mining.
PNNL researchers have conducted three separate tests of the adsorbent’s performance to date by exposing it to large volumes of seawater from Sequim Bay next to its Marine Sciences Laboratory. The water was pumped into a tank about the size of a large hot tub.
“For each test, we put about two pounds of the fiber into the tank for about one month and pumped the seawater through quickly, to mimic conditions in the open ocean” said Gill. “LCW then extracted the uranium from the adsorbent and, from these first three tests, we got about five grams — about what a nickel weighs. It might not sound like much, but it can really add up.”
Gill notes that seawater contains about three parts per billion of uranium. It’s estimated that there is at least four billion tons of uranium in seawater, which is about 500 times the amount of uranium known to exist in land-based ores, which must be mined.
Mining of underground uranium has environmental challenges not encountered with extracting it from the oceans. And Wai says the fibers, which have affinity for more heavy metals than just uranium, can likely be used one day to clean up toxic waterways themselves. He says the fibers have potential to extract vanadium, an expensive metal used in large scale batteries, from the oceans instead of mining it from the ground.
For now, based on the successful scaled-up testing in Sequim and significant production of yellowcake, LCW is applying for further SBIR funding for a uranium extraction field demonstration, to be led by PNNL, in the Gulf of Mexico, where the water is much warmer. The material performs much better in warmer water and extraction rates in the Gulf are expected to be three to five times higher, therefore making it more economical to obtain uranium from seawater.
Learn more: Seawater yields first grams of yellowcake
The Latest on: Uranium from seawater
via Google News
The Latest on: Uranium from seawater
- The Long History Of Fast Reactors And The Promise Of A Closed Fuel Cycleon January 9, 2021 at 3:59 pm
These would replace other types of thermal plants with one that would produce no exhaust gases, no fly ash and require only occasional refueling using uranium and other fissile fuels that can be ...
- No-Melt Nuclear ‘Power Balls’ Might Win A Few Hearts And Mindson January 8, 2021 at 4:00 pm
Today, nuclear fission is largely produced with fuel rods, which are skinny zirconium tubes packed with uranium pellets. The fission rate is kept in check with control rods, which are made of ...
- NEW EXPLOSION AT JAPAN'S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI UNIT NO. 3 NUKE REACTORon January 8, 2021 at 4:00 pm
The Daily Yomiuri tweets that the government is announcing seawater will be injected into it as coolant ... pooed the notion that plutonium MOX fuel was anymore dangerous than uranium-based fuel, ...
- What's the Difference Between Thorium and Uranium Nuclear Reactors?on January 4, 2021 at 4:00 pm
The short answer to the question asked above is that uranium-fueled reactors can be built right away, but they use fuel inefficiently. Thorium-fueled reactors, on the other hand, are fuel ...
- Indonesia’s Nuclear Dream, Revived?on December 31, 2020 at 10:27 pm
Increasingly the inspection business concerns thorium, as well as unconventional uranium resources such as phosphate rocks, monazite, rare-earth elements, black shales, lignite, and some seawater ...
- Global Uranium Supply and Demandon December 20, 2020 at 4:01 pm
Though uranium mining is making a comeback after a two-decade slump, obstacles such as infrastructure problems, stable access to enrichment services, and environmental concerns still dog the industry.
- Mission possible? The long road ahead for Fukushima cleanup.on December 4, 2020 at 9:00 am
Using muons that pass through light objects but are blocked by heavy substances such as uranium, they tried to ... Inside reactor No. 3, fresh water and sea water injected to cool the nuclear ...
- Recover uranium from seawater? D.O.S.T. nuke scientists doing studieson September 26, 2020 at 12:33 pm
As the government mulls to include nuclear in the country’s energy mix, local scientists are looking at seawater to possibly source uranium which serves as power source for nuclear energy.
- Why WWII Navy Veterans Added Salt to Their Coffeeon September 2, 2020 at 10:08 am
Those black beans became just as important for fueling the Navy as diesel fuel or uranium. Descendants of ... World War II-era ships that converted sea water to drinking water weren’t 100% ...
via Bing News