Aquaculture of uranium in seawater by a fabric-adsorbent submerged system

Seko, Noriaki; Katakai, Akio; Hasegawa, Shin; Tamada, Masao; Kasai, Noboru; Takeda, Hayato*; Sugo, Takanobu; Saito, Kyoichi*

The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg-U/m in the world's oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific non-woven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage. We submerged adsorption cages, 16 m in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height, in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The cage consisted of stacks of 52,000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the non-woven fabric was more than one kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.