Fluxnium has raised $7 million in seed funding to commercialize technology designed to extract uranium from seawater, giving the company additional capital to develop a potential domestic source of the critical mineral used across civilian nuclear power and defense applications. The round was led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Constellation Technology Ventures, the venture investing organization within Constellation, and Active Impact Investments, a Canadian climate technology seed investor.
Fluxnium plans to use the proceeds for further technology development, pilot testing and scale-up of its uranium adsorption platform.
The Los Angeles-based company is pursuing an alternative to conventional uranium mining by collecting uranium that naturally exists in seawater.
Although the concentration of uranium in seawater is extremely low, the total amount contained in the world’s oceans is enormous. Fluxnium said seawater contains roughly 1,000 times more uranium than all currently identified terrestrial deposits combined, representing centuries of potential supply for the global uranium market.
The technical challenge is capturing that uranium economically.
Fluxnium is developing a proprietary high-surface-area adsorbent fiber designed to passively collect dissolved uranium as seawater moves across it. The technology was recently developed with a leading U.S. national laboratory, according to the company.
Rather than building a conventional mine, Fluxnium plans to deploy its fiber on longline systems in open water.
The infrastructure is similar to passive marine systems already used by seaweed and mussel farms. After spending time in the water, the fiber can be retrieved, processed to recover the accumulated uranium and then redeployed.
Fluxnium believes this deployment model could allow production capacity to grow incrementally by placing more fiber in the ocean rather than undertaking the lengthy development of additional mines.
The company is targeting a production cost that it says could ultimately compete with conventional uranium mining.
If the technology reaches commercial scale and achieves those economics, the approach could offer nuclear operators another potential source of uranium while avoiding mine tailings and groundwater-related concerns associated with conventional extraction.
Fluxnium is positioning the technology around increasing concern over the security and diversity of U.S. nuclear fuel supplies.
According to the company, the United States currently imports more than 90% of its uranium supply.
At the same time, interest in nuclear generation is increasing as utilities and governments look for reliable electricity capable of supporting economic expansion and growing power demand.
That creates a potential market for new uranium production technologies that can supplement mining while adding domestic and allied supply.
Traditional uranium projects can require substantial capital, permitting work and years of development before reaching commercial production.
Fluxnium argues that offshore adsorption could provide a fundamentally different scaling model.
Once the technology and supporting processing infrastructure are established, additional production could potentially be created through additional fiber deployments rather than developing entirely new mining operations.
The company’s investor group also brings experience spanning energy, nuclear power and climate technology.
Congruent Ventures is an early-stage climate-focused venture capital firm with more than $1 billion under management. Founded in 2017, the firm has backed more than 60 companies and invests across areas including energy, agriculture, industrial efficiency, mobility, the built environment and climate resilience.
Constellation Technology Ventures provides Fluxnium with a strategic connection to the U.S. nuclear power sector.
CTV operates as the venture investing arm of Constellation, which Fluxnium described as the largest producer of clean, carbon-free energy in the United States.
Constellation’s participation is a venture investment supporting the development of Fluxnium’s technology and does not represent a commitment by the energy company to purchase uranium from Fluxnium.
Active Impact Investments also participated in the seed round.
The Vancouver-based firm manages three funds with approximately $180 million in assets and focuses on early-stage climate technology businesses.
Fluxnium was founded by CEO Jeff Green and co-founder Jim McDermott, who the company’s investors said have previous experience bringing hard-technology concepts toward commercialization.
The company now faces the challenge of proving that uranium adsorption from seawater can move beyond laboratory and technical development into economically competitive commercial production.
Its next phase will center on additional development, pilot deployments and scaling the fiber technology sufficiently to demonstrate how the system performs under real-world marine conditions.
For the nuclear industry, the potential significance extends beyond creating another individual uranium producer.
If adsorption technology can operate economically at scale, the ocean could represent a substantially larger potential uranium resource than conventional terrestrial deposits and could provide a production model whose capacity is determined increasingly by fiber deployment and processing capabilities.
Fluxnium’s longer-term goal is to make seawater one of the world’s lowest-cost sources of uranium while establishing a new domestic supply pathway for a mineral increasingly viewed as strategically important to both energy security and national security.
KEY QUOTES:
“The United States imports more than 90% of its uranium supply at a time when nuclear power is increasingly seen as a solution to growing demand for electricity driven by economic growth.”
“Fluxnium is developing a new domestic and sustainable supply of uranium, passively adsorbed from seawater on proven offshore infrastructure — at a cost projected to compete with conventional mining, with no tailings or ground water concerns.”
Jeff Green, CEO and Founder of Fluxnium
“With the current uranium market dynamics, there is a new path to making the ocean one of the lowest-cost sources in the world.”
“Congruent is excited to support Fluxnium as it unlocks the ocean’s potential as a major contributor to a diverse and robust domestic nuclear fuel supply chain.”
Kevin Kopczynski, Partner at Congruent Ventures
“Innovations that could expand domestic sources of uranium are important areas of research for the nuclear energy industry.”
“Fluxnium’s technology has the potential to broaden future fuel supply options and support growing demand for clean, reliable nuclear energy.”
Jason Murphy, Vice President of Nuclear Fuels at Constellation
“With global nuclear power generation projected to increase 2.5X in the next 15 years, Fluxnium is the future of uranium supply with clean, lower cost ocean adsorption displacing the environmental damage from mining and tailings.”
“We have strong conviction that Jeff and co-founder Jim McDermott, with their prior successes taking hardtech ideas to commercial reality, are the ideal team to seize this opportunity.”
Tom Boddez, General Partner at Active Impact Investments
