The Hindu Business Line : DAE goes innovative as uranium supply gets tough

Unorthodox recovery
Heavy Water Board sets up technology demonstration plant for the recovery of uranium from phosphoric acid
Indian Rare Earths also looks at other secondary sources such as thorium hydroxide concentrate and other metallurgical process residues

Anil Sasi

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New Delhi, June 29 The ongoing uranium crunch at the country’s atomic stations has prompted ingenious attempts by utilities under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to diversify and augment the uranium sourcing base.

These include attempts to squeeze out nuclear-grade uranium from secondary sources such as phosphoric acid, metallurgical process residues and even sea water.

The Heavy Water Board, a state-owned utility under the DAE, is setting up an industrial-scale Technology Demonstration Plant for the recovery of uranium from phosphoric acid, manufactured using rock phosphate, at Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertiliser’s Trombay facility.

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has reported “significant progress” in its attempts to bio-recover uranium from sea water and dilute nuclear waste using natural and genetically-engineered microbes.

Indian Rare Earths Ltd, another public service utility under DAE, is also setting up demonstration plants to recover uranium from phosphoric acid, in addition to recovering uranium from various secondary sources such as thorium hydroxide concentrate and other metallurgical process residues, Government sources involved in the exercise said.

phosphoric squeeze

“The country’s nuclear stations are currently starving for uranium. Since the Heavy Water Board has taken on the challenge of producing uranium from phosphoric acid, atomic stations in the country could hope to get uranium from the Board in the foreseeable future. Once this happens, India could hope to generate electricity from Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors beyond the current limit of 10,000 MW, using indigenous resources,” an official said.

The Board’s Technology Demonstration Plant (TDP) at Trombay aims to squeeze traces of uranium from phosphoric acid, basically taking advantage of the fact that rock phosphate contains 60-150 parts for every million parts of uranium.

The plant would be located adjacent to Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertiliser’s wet phosphoric acid plant in Trombay and would produce uranium in the form of ammonium di-uranate. This material would be processed further by DAE’s nuclear fuel complex at Hyderabad to prepare enriched uranium that can, subsequently, be used by nuclear power stations.

Sea water results

BARC’s attempts to viably extricate uranium from sea water have also begun yielding “very positive” results, according to officials.

Sea water is known to contain uranium but the low concentration of the nuclear fuel and high cost of its extraction has traditionally inhibited the option of commercial sourcing of uranium from the seas. The BARC method involves passing sea water through a specially made polymer that will absorb uranium selectively.

According to estimates, nearly 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be present in sea water, with Japanese scientists in the 1980s having demonstrated that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion-exchangers was feasible.

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