Florida Stakes Its Claim in the Uranium Market

Florida is blessed with some of the worlds greatest phosphate rock deposits, and doubly blessed in that those deposits are uraniferous. Until recently, the uranium con¬tained in phosphate rock had been ignored, but spot mar¬ket prices in the $40-per-pound range have spurred actions which will soon transform the state into a major uranium supplier. In 1978, two plants in Florida and one in Louisiana went it on- stream to recover uranium oxide from phosphoric acid, and construction began on three other extraction facilities. Together, these six plants will be cap¬able of recovering 1940 t/y (2140 stpy) of yellow cake from Florida phosphate in the early 1980s, equivalent to 15% of the projected US requirement. By the year 2000, Florida phosphates will have produced a projected 49 000 tons (54,000 st) of uranium oxide to fuel the nation's nuclear reactors.