My Blogs : First Opinion ; Radiation Protection Issues ; My Voice
My Website : www.radsafetyinfo.com
Friday, February 24, 2017
Uranium from sea water?
There was a news item in
TOI dated 22 Feb. 2017 on “Harnessing N-Power from Oceans”. Presence of naturally occurring radioactive
materials like uranium and thorium in water, soil and rocks is known. However,
the concentration of these materials in very low, in parts per million (ppm) or
parts per billion (ppb). Recovering the elements at such low levels from such
complex matrices is very difficult and not cost effective. Japanese and Indian researchers
have done good amount of work in the extraction of uranium from sea water.
Uranium concentration in
sea water is about 3 ppm (3 milligram of uranium in one cubic meter of sea
water). If one multiplies this by the total volume of sea water, there will be billions
of tons of uranium potentially available. As per Japanese study, the cost of
uranium may work out to be over 300 USD per kg! May be, it can be the last desperate
resort for producing uranium for power generation.
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