US team to build offshore system for industrial-scale uranium recovery from seawater

SuperCritical Materials has partnered with the University of Michigan to engineer and test offshore systems for industrial-scale uranium extraction from seawater. The oceans hold an estimated 4.5 billion metric tons of dissolved uranium, but commercial deployment requires efficient, repeatable handling of large amounts of adsorbent.

• Oceans contain an estimated 4.5 billion metric tons of dissolved uranium
• Testing will take place at the Aaron Friedman Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory
• The work will be led by Maha Haji, who studied the problem at MIT
• Goal is to assess whether seawater uranium can compete at industrial scale for US nuclear fuel