Chinese team extracts uranium from seawater at 8 times the US target rate

Chinese scientists have developed a method to extract uranium from seawater at a rate eight times higher than the US Department of Energy's target. The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences utilized a material called PhosCage, a sponge-like structure filled with phosphate groups that act as chemical traps. They recovered up to 50.4mg of uranium for every gram of the adsorbent from natural seawater samples, surpassing the US target of 6mg per gram.

The researchers then transformed PhosCage into millimetre-sized beads, which were easier to deploy and retrieve in the ocean. These beads captured 22.55mg of uranium per gram and remained functional after seven cycles of reuse. This breakthrough could be crucial for China, which has abundant uranium reserves but relies heavily on imports, as domestic mines only produced 1,600 tonnes in 2024.

The ocean holds an estimated 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium, enough to meet global nuclear fuel needs for around 180 years. However, extracting uranium from seawater is challenging due to its low concentration and the presence of other dissolved elements, such as vanadium, which can stick to the same chemical traps. Despite these challenges, the Qingdao team's work overcame significant extraction hurdles, demonstrating a clear preference for uranium over vanadium in their tests.