Recovery system for uranium from seawater with fibrous adsorbent and its preliminary cost estimation

The cost of uranium recovered from seawater was estimated to extract the technical problems in the practical application of the fibrous amidoxime adsorbent synthesized by radiation graftpolymerization. Each cost of the adsorbent production, the dipping in seawater for uranium absorption, and the uranium elution from the adsorbent was estimated in three different mooring systems of a buoy, floating body, and chain binding system. The recovery cost was estimated to be 5-10 times of that from mining uranium. More than 80% of the total cost was occupied by the cost for marine equipment for mooring the adsorbents in seawater, which is owing to a weight of metal cage for adsorbents. Thus, the cost can be reduced to half by the reduction of the equipment weight to 1/4. The improvement of adsorbent ability is research subjects in the future also, since the cost directly depends on the adsorbent performance. (author)