Which chemicals can precipitate uranium from acidic solutions?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Enrichment of uranium — uranium processing How uranium is enriched to make a nuclear weapon.

To precipitate uranium from acidic solutions during the uranium processing stage, neutralizers are added to the solution. The most common chemicals used for this purpose include:

Aqueous ammonia: This is the most frequently used reagent, typically resulting in the precipitation of ammonium diuranate, $(N H_{4})_{2} U_{2} O_{7}$ .1
Sodium hydroxide: A common neutralizer used to facilitate precipitation.1
Magnesia: Another chemical agent employed to neutralize acidic solutions and precipitate the uranium.1

Following this process, the resulting precipitate—often referred to as yellow cake—is dried and prepared for further purification.1