In a report released on August 2, 1999, the The President's Committee Of Advisors On Science

And Technology (PCAST ) recommended that the U.S. consider participating in international
research on extracting uranium from seawater:
"One possibility for maintaining fission as a major option without reprocessing is low-cost
extraction of uranium from seawater. The uranium concentration of sea water is low
(approximately 3 ppb) but the quantity of contained uranium is vast - some 4 billion tonnes
(about 700 times more than known terrestrial resources recoverable at a price of up to $130 per
kg). If half of this resource could ultimately be recovered, it could support for 6,500 years 3,000
GW of nuclear capacity (75 percent capacity factor) based on next-generation reactors (e.g.,
high-temperature gas-cooled reactors) operated on once-through fuel cycles. Research on a
process being developed in Japan suggests that it might be feasible to recover uranium from
seawater at a cost of $120 per lb of U3O8.40 Although this is more than 10 times the current
uranium price, it would contribute just 0.5 per kWh to the cost of electricity for a nextgeneration reactor operated on a once-through fuel cycle-equivalent to the fuel cost for an oilfired power plant burning $3-a-barrel oil." [emphasis added]
40

Nobukawa 1994: H. Nobukawa "Development of a Floating Type System for Uranium Extraction from Sea Water
Using Sea Current and Wave Power," in Proceedings of the 4th International Offshore and Polar Engineering
Conference (Osaka, Japan: 10-15 April 1994), pp. 294-300.

Source: Powerful Partnerships: The Federal Role In International Cooperation On Energy

Innovation. A Report From The President's Committee Of Advisors On Science And Technology
Panel On International Cooperation In Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, And
Deployment. Washington, DC, June 1999, p. 5-26 - 5-27 (download full text , 1.3M PDF
format)