PURPOSE: To manufacture a concd. U soln. for a yellow cake by passing a soln. contg. desorbed U through a strongly basic anion exchange resin to allow the U to be adsorbed on the resin, eluting the adsorbed U with an NaCl soln. and an HCl soln., and carrying out concn.
CONSTITUTION: U in sea water is allowed to be adsorbed on an adsorbent, and the adsorbed U is allowed to be desorbed with a carbonate soln. The resulting soln. 1 contg. the desorbed U is passed through a separation column 4 packed with a strongly basic anion exchange resin with a pump 3 through a four way valve 2 to allow U ions to be adsorbed on the resin. A soln. 7 of an alkali metallic salt such as NaCl is then fed to the column 4 by an amount corresponding to the volume of the column 4, and a strong acid 8 such as HCl is further fed to elute the U adsorbed on the resin and to recover a concd. U soln. 9. The soln. 9 is decarbonated by azeotropic distillation with HCl and cooled, and after carrying out masking by adding CyDTA, a concd. U soln. is obtd. by chelate adsorption and elution with HCl. When a yellow cake is manufactured, an aqueous ammonia soln. is added to the concd. U soln. to form ammonium diuranate.
USAMI KATSUHISA
YAMASHITA HISAO
FUJITA KAZUNORI
OZAWA YOSHIHIRO
