The exploitation of bugs to extract and process uranium from low-grade ore can help India to generate fuel for nuclear reactors in a sustainable and eco-friendly way, an expert said here on Friday.
India will import 3,000 tonnes of uranium from Canada in the coming five years as per a deal inked between the countries during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's just-concluded visit to the country.
"The quantity of uranium which we require is insufficient in India because we have got low-grade ores and the quantity of uranium is very low inside that," Abhilash, a scientist at the National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, told IANS here.
"We need more amount of fuel that's why we have signed agreements with Australia, Canada and other countries so that we can take uranium and use it as fuel. Micro-organisms can solve the problems of uranium extraction from low-grade ores in India."
NML is a CSIR (Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research) institute.
He said by harnessing micro-organisms to leach uranium (a process called bio-leaching) from ores, India can ensure indigenous uranium production to be fed into the planned nuclear reactors.
"We can use our own resources and it is sustainable. We use the bacteria available in the mines," scientists said here on the sidelines of the "Recent Advances in Biotechnology" conference at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in collaboration with The Biotech Research Society, India.
Explaining the process, Abhilash said the particular species of bacteria can be harnessed to convert the uranium in the ores to a usable form called "yellow cake".
"We have the ore which contains iron and uranium both and this bacteria is growing proficiently on iron so what it does is, it takes the iron which is soluble and converts it into a further soluble form like an oxidant. This helps in converting uranium to another form of uranium which comes in solution."
"What industry does is that... they precipitate it and make 'yellow cake' which is radioactive. This ore is not radioactive. So they pack it and send it to Hyderabad. In Hyderabad, we have the Nuclear Fuel Complex," he said, adding the technology is eco-friendly.
Established in 1971, the NFC is a major industrial unit of Department of Atomic Energy for the supply of nuclear fuel bundles and reactor core components.
However, the single demerit is that private players cannot have access to this technology.
"We can't have private players working in this technology. We only need Indian government because uranium being a strategic material we can only have the government's participation," he said.
Abhilash said the procedure has been applied to two tonnes of ore so far and scientists are now scaling it up.
"We have worked on two tonnes and the Indian government is quite to happy to give us funds for 100 tonnes... so it definitely looks attractive," he added.
