Recovery of uranium from secondary sources

Uranium is an indispensible material for the generation of electricity by nuclear reactors. The depletion of primary uranium ore bodies has rekindled interest in recovering uranium from other sources to bridge the gap between supply and demand. Among the secondary resources of uranium, natural rock phosphate is an important sustainable secondary source of uranium that offers dual advantages not only to provide uranium for energy production, but also for preventing the environment from contamination by hazardous radioactive elements. The present talk will give a brief summary of processing of rock phosphates for uranium recovery by solvent extraction process. The comparison of various organic extractant systems including octyl pyro phosphates, synergistic mixture of diethyl hexyl phosphoric acid with TOPO or TBP, polyalkyl phosphazenes and bifunctional amido-phosphonic acid will be discussed during the presentation with their advantages and disadvantages. The reason behind closing down the earlier operating phosphoric acid -uranium plants as well as current interest in recovering uranium from rock phosphate resource will be deliberated in detail