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| Uraninite |
It has 92 protons and 92 electrons. Six of these electrons are valence electrons. Valence electrons are electrons of an atom that can participate in the formation of chemical bonds with other atoms
Uranium occurs naturally in soil, rock, and water at low concentrations of a few parts per million. For commercial purposes, uranium is extracted from minerals such as uraninite (also known as pitchblende). Uraninite is a uranium-rich mineral and ore that is the major source for uranium.
Advances in decades-old dream of mining seawater for uranium
Scientists today reported progress toward a 40-year-old dream of extracting uranium for nuclear power from seawater, which holds at least 4 billion tons of the precious material. They described some of the most promising technology and an economic analysis showing uranium from the oceans could help solidify nuclear energy potential as a sustainable electricity source for the 21st century. Their reports were part of a symposium at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, being held here through Thursday.
"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," said Robin D. Rogers, Ph.D., who organized the symposium and presented his own technology. "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."
Erich Schneider, Ph.D., another speaker at the symposium, discussed an economic analysis done for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) comparing seawater extraction of uranium to traditional ore mining. It shows that DOE-funded technology now can extract about twice as much uranium from seawater as the first approaches, developed in Japan in the late 1990s.
