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SuperCritical Materials licenses technology for uranium seawater extraction
Last week, Austin, Texas–based nuclear fuel start-up SuperCritical Materials announced that it has secured a license from the Department of Energy for a patented uranium and critical materials adsorbent manufacturing process originally developed by a team led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
SuperCritical aims to use this license to extract uranium from seawater at an industrial scale in the United States and abroad.
Vikram Rathore, Lorenzo Senis, Stefan Jarl Holm, Erik Andersson Sundén, Ane Håkansson, Mounia Laassiri, Peter Dendooven, Peter Andersson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 3 | March 2024 | Pages 532-541
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2236882
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Postirradiation examination of nuclear fuel is routinely performed to characterize the important properties of current and future fuel. Gamma emission tomography is a proven noninvasive technique for this purpose. Among various measurement elements of the technique, a gamma-ray detector is an important element whose spectroscopic abilities and detection efficiency affect the overall results. Finding a combination of high detection efficiency and excellent energy resolution in a single detector is often a challenge. We have designed a novel planar segmented high-purity germanium detector that offers simultaneous measurement in six lines of sight with excellent energy resolution. The simultaneous detection ability enables faster data acquisition in a tomographic measurement, which may facilitate achieving higher spatial resolution. In this work, we have demonstrated the first use of the detector by performing a full tomographic measurement of mockup fuel rods. Two methods of detector data analysis were used to make spectra, and the images (tomograms) were reconstructed using the filtered back projection algorithm. The reconstructed images validate the successful use of the detector for tomographic measurement. The use of the detector for real fuel measurement is being planned and will be performed in the near future.