Sea uranium extraction ‘close to economic reality’

Improvements to the extraction technology have almost halved production costs from around 560 dollars (£355) per pound of uranium to 300 dollars (£190).

Dr Robin Rogers, from the University of Alabama, told the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia: “Estimates indicate that the oceans are a mother lode of uranium, with far more uranium dissolved in seawater than in all the known terrestrial deposits that can be mined.

“The difficulty has always been that the concentration is just very, very low, making the cost of extraction high. But we are gaining on that challenge.”