Morocco poised to tap into phosphates reserves to produce uranium- Think Tank

Morocco sits on tremendous uranium reserves thanks to its world’s largest phosphates deposits that could help the country power its desalination plants and export surplus, the Middle East Institute said.

The paper, by Michael Tanchum, recalls that 73% of the world’s phosphate rock reserves contain an estimated 6.9 million tons of uranium, that compares to the 1.9 million tons of uranium found in the world’s largest uranium ore reserves in Australia.

Morocco is poised to tap into its uranium potential to power desalination plants under its response to water stress.

A deal was signed with a subsidiary of Russian state-owned Rosatom to look into cooperation prospects in the field of nuclear-powered desalination plants.

The paper also highlights developing technology to extract uranium as a phosphates by-product.

“Despite the renewed interest in uranium as a phosphate byproduct, the technology for recovering uranium from phosphoric acid is well established,” the author of the paper says, recalling that in the 1980s, 20% of US uranium was extracted from phosphoric acid.