Cost estimation for recovery of uranium from seawater with braid type adsorbent

Tamada, Masao; Seko, Noriaki; Kasai, Noboru; Shimizu, Takao*

Recovery cost of uranium from seawater was estimated on the conditions of annual 1200 ton-scale recovery and 2g-U/kg-adsorbent (hereafter ad) for adsorbent performance after 60 days soaking in seawater. The adsorbent was supposed to be used for 6 times and the six cycles of soaking were carried out annually. In these conditions, the uranium cost was estimated at 88 thousands yen/kg-U. If the repeatability of adsorbent increased up to 18 times, the cost became 48 thousands yen/kg-U. Further increment to 60 times reduced the cost to 34 thousands yen/kg-U. In the marine experiment at Okinawa, 3g-U/kg-ad of uranium adsorption was obtained by dipping an adsorbent chip into seawater for 30 days. This capacity supposed to be extended for 4 g-U/kg-ad for 60 days soaking. This adsorption capacity can lead the cost of 25 thousands yen/kg-U at 18 times usage. In this case, initial investment is 108 billions yen which is one third of the construction cost of one million-kW nuclear plant.