Startup Fluxnium has unveiled a technology to extract uranium directly from seawater, in an effort to address concerns about nuclear fuel supplies in the United States. The company relies on polymer fibers designed to attract dissolved uranium, then extract the element from the fibers and convert it into “yellowcake,” which enters the nuclear fuel supply chain.
The announcement coincided with Fluxnium’s closing of a $7 million seed funding round led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Active Impact Investments and Constellation Energy, which operates the largest nuclear fleet in the United States. The company had been operating in stealth mode before announcing its technology.
Why does this development matter?
The United States plans to triple the capacity of its nuclear power plants by 2050, but achieving this goal depends partly on the availability of affordable fuel. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the price of unrefined uranium, known as yellowcake, has risen 75% over the past five years.
The United States does not have significant uranium resources within its borders, while a large share of global supplies is concentrated in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Namibia, Niger, and China. Jeff Green, Fluxnium’s founder and CEO, believes this distribution adds geopolitical risks to the expected expansion in demand, particularly as interest in nuclear power returns and technology companies consider using potential reactors to provide electricity for artificial intelligence data centers.
According to the article, ocean waters contain more than 4 billion metric tons of uranium, an amount the company says would be sufficient for approximately 50,000 years. But the existence of the resource does not automatically mean it can be extracted economically, as uranium is present in seawater at a very low concentration.
How does the technology work?
The fibers are manufactured as long, braided ropes, then transported to the sea and suspended from buoys in a manner resembling the cultivation of seaweed. After remaining in the water for 30 to 60 days, they are returned to shore, where the uranium is extracted from them without producing toxic waste from mining. Each line can be reused several times.
The underlying chemistry was based on technology developed by U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories. Fluxnium licensed this chemistry and then continued developing the manufacture and arrangement of the fibers. The company says that increasing the fibers’ surface area raised the amount of uranium they could capture and reduced the cost compared with an earlier demonstration of the technology at a national laboratory, which exceeded $200 per pound.
What has not yet been proven?
The source does not provide a final figure for Fluxnium’s production cost, nor does it report commercial pilot results or an independent assessment of the environmental impact of deploying the fibers in the sea. Manufacturing, deploying, and recovering the fibers also represent a significant portion of the cost. Therefore, the announcement’s importance currently lies in a promising technical and funding path, not in proving that extracting uranium from seawater has become a ready alternative to mines.
Fluxnium says its components are not a single new invention and that its primary mission is to reduce costs by improving every stage of the process chain. Testing its ability to operate for long periods, achieve a competitive cost, and obtain the necessary approvals will be decisive in determining whether it evolves from a startup project into an actual source of nuclear fuel.