Uranium supply potential from imported phosphate rocks for the Philippine nuclear power program

Abstract

The Philippines is planning to rehabilitate its mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) to provide affordable electricity and meet carbon emission goals. Despite not having domestic uranium resources, the Philippines import considerable amounts of phosphate rock for mineral fertilizer production that is known to contain between 50-200 mg uranium per kg ore. Recovering the uranium from phosphate rock during wet-phosphoric acid (WPA) production, the process used in the Philippines, is a mature technology that was used at fertilizer plants in Florida in the 1980s and 1990s before decreasing uranium prices made it unprofitable. Uranium prices are bound to rise again, and this work estimates the amount of uranium that could be recovered during WPA production in the Philippines. We estimate that between 14.4-25.6 t natural uranium could have theoretically been recovered annually in 2020, 2021 and 2022. This amount is equivalent to approximately 12-21% of the projected annual uranium requirements of the BNPP. Phosphate rock imports into the Philippines are still below pre-Typhoon Haiyan levels and when the industry recovers it is likely that more than one-fourth of the uranium requirements of the BNPP could be met with unconventional uranium recovered from imported phosphate rocks.