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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.
Hatice Akkurt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 10 | October 2024 | Pages 1843-1857
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2302734
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron-absorber materials are used in spent fuel pool (SFP) storage racks to increase storage capacity while maintaining criticality safety margins. Previously, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) proposed a global, industrywide learning aging management program (i-LAMP) as an alternative monitoring program as part of an aging management program. This proposal, along with other EPRI work, was accepted as a concept to close the issued generic letter by the regulator. Since then, EPRI has been working with EPRI-member utilities around the world on data collection. Furthermore, recently, a utility removed two neutron-absorber panels from an operating SFP to meet a regulatory commitment made prior to the i-LAMP proposal. Because of their age and unique history, these panels provided a unique opportunity not only to analyze the conditions of the panels, but also to potentially bound i-LAMP. This paper presents i-LAMP development to date with a focus on BORAL analysis results for these two unique panels, pilot pools as case studies to demonstrate the i-LAMP implementation, and a proposal for a path forward.