Uranium and Radionuclide Separation from Aqueous Sources
This community develops materials and methods to capture uranium, cesium, and other radioactive elements from water, seawater, and industrial waste streams.
The work centers on designing adsorbents and extraction media that selectively bind radioactive ions in complex liquid environments. Recurring materials include covalent organic frameworks, metal-organic frameworks, graphene oxide, and chitosan composites. The primary applications are uranium recovery from seawater, removal of uranium and cesium from nuclear wastewater, and treatment of radioactive waste. Methods frequently involve electrochemical extraction, photocatalytic reduction, and selective sorption in acidic or neutral aqueous solutions. The research addresses the challenge of isolating low-concentration radionuclides from high-salinity or chemically complex matrices, such as seawater or spent fuel processing streams.
The largest share of the community's output is found in uranium research, accounting for 19.0% of all uranium research, with 20,415 papers in this group. Thorium and plutonium research also contribute significantly, representing 6.5% and 12.3% of their respective element research totals.
The community comprises 64,813 papers, publishing most frequently in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, and Radiochimica Acta.
Recent work continues to focus on enhancing the efficiency and selectivity of uranium extraction from seawater and wastewater. Newer studies explore advanced architectures such as hierarchical triple-channel systems and AI-assisted design of covalent organic frameworks to improve photocatalytic performance and adsorption capacity under challenging conditions.