Researchers developed a material that they say opens up a ‘novel approach’ to recover the nuclear fuel from the world’s oceans
2-MIN READ2-MINLing Xinin OhioPublished: 10:00pm, 4 Sep 2026Chinese researchers have found a way to extract uranium from seawater at several times the target rate set by the US Department of Energy, putting China at the forefront of a global quest to tap into a vast source of nuclear fuel.The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao did this using a material they developed called PhosCage – a sponge-like molecular structure filled with phosphate groups that act as chemical traps.
They then turned PhosCage into millimetre-sized beads that are easier to deploy and retrieve in the open ocean. The beads captured 22.55mg per gram and continued to work through seven cycles of reuse.
“This work opens up a novel approach to extracting uranium from seawater and lays the groundwork for adsorbents that can capture more uranium and eventually be used on a large scale,” the team from the CAS’ Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology said in the statement.
