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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.
Weiping Zhang, Yiheng Chen, Wenrui Cheng, Liping Guo, FengFeng Luo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 10 | October 2024 | Pages 1925-1931
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2304914
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Vanadium is a typical low-activation metal and has the advantages of lower neutron irradiation activation, better mechanical properties at high temperature, and higher compatibility with the liquid lithium blanket. However, the effect of helium on the formation of irradiation defects in vanadium has not been adequately explored at low temperatures (below 723 K). Helium ion irradiations of 18 keV up to 0.54 displacement per atom were employed to study the temperature-dependent behavior of irradiation defects in vanadium at 523, 623, and 723 K. Helium bubbles were observed in vanadium under irradiations at all temperatures, but no dislocation loops were observed. With the increase of irradiation temperature, the average size of helium bubbles and swelling increased, and the density of helium bubbles decreased. It is noteworthy that the average size of helium bubbles and swelling increased significantly when the irradiation temperature increased from 623 to 723 K. In addition, pentagonal helium bubbles, helium bubbles nucleated at the grain boundary, and combinations between helium bubbles were observed.