Austin-based SuperCritical Materials Corp. has secured a license from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to commercialize a patented uranium and critical materials extraction technology developed by DOE laboratories. <\/p>\n
The development is a significant step toward expanding future nuclear fuel supply through unconventional uranium resources.<\/p>\n
Developed with support from the DOE\u2019s Office of Nuclear Energy and led by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the licensed technology<\/a> is designed to extract uranium from seawater using advanced adsorbent materials. SuperCritical said the agreement grants the company rights to manufacture and deploy the technology at industrial scale in the United States, with plans to expand into allied nations in the future.<\/p>\n The announcement comes as the United States accelerates investment in advanced nuclear<\/a> energy to meet rising electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries. Industry experts have increasingly highlighted that while reactor development is advancing, expanding the upstream nuclear fuel supply chain\u2014including uranium production, enrichment and fuel fabrication\u2014remains a critical challenge.<\/p>\n According to the company, the world\u2019s oceans contain an estimated 4.5 billion metric tons of dissolved uranium, representing a resource far larger than known terrestrial reserves. While extracting uranium from seawater has long been considered technically feasible, commercial deployment has remained limited due to economic and engineering challenges<\/a>.<\/p>\n SuperCritical intends to commercialize DOE-developed process<\/p>\n SuperCritical said it intends to commercialize the DOE-developed process using advances in adsorption chemistry and materials science. In addition to uranium, the company believes the technology could also enable the recovery of other strategically important critical materials<\/a> from seawater.<\/p>\n The company describes its long-term strategy as building infrastructure to support what it calls the \u201cIntelligence Economy,\u201d a period of economic growth expected to be driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced computing, defense technologies and digital infrastructure. It argues that reliable nuclear energy and secure fuel supplies will be essential to sustaining this growth.<\/p>\n