With the increase in world population and the associated increase in raw material, clean water and energy demands, seeking for innovative and sustainable methods to decrease human-made environmental footprint becomes a task of utmost importance to reduce emissions and waste generation. Uranium-based atomic energy generation has an enormous potential to efficiently supply energy demand at the cost of high environmental impact on water bodies. Therefore, estimating the environmental impacts of the uranium recovery systems from desalination waste is a necessity. This study assessed the environmental impact of uranium recovery method from brine via AF1 and PAN-AO amidoximated adsorbents and compared them with the conventional uranium mining methods. As a life-cycle impact assessment method International Reference Life Cycle Data System was conducted with 16 impact categories considering cradle to gate analysis. The results for AF1, PAN-AO and all conventional uranium extraction methods showed that recovery of uranium in the long run is more effective than the conventional procedures. The sensitivity analysis results reveal that hydroxylamine, hazardous waste disposal are the most influential parameters during the uranium recovery via adsorbent methods. Comparative analysis between energy sources used in adsorbent recovery processes indicated that solar energy has the lowest environmental impacts among all kinds of energy scenarios. This study concluded that an alternative sustainable industrial process to obtain uranium is actually applicable. Hence, developing a uranium recovery strategy from brine should be considered while uranium mines are under investigation.

Since carbon-based fuels and freshwater sources are depleting rapidly, alternative renewable energy and water resources must be used for the growing world’s demand. In Northern Cyprus Island, about 70% of the water supply of the region comes from abroad via a pipeline, and the electricity is produced by burning fuel oil that places a high burden on the environment. As an alternative solution, a concentrating solar power plant using parabolic trough collectors coupled with desalination was designed for a selected area in the island for this study. Evaluation of the design was conducted by analyzing the performance by estimating the hourly thermal and electrical energy production and by LCA considering cradle to gate analysis. The results show that the proposed system could provide all the electrical demand and about 78% of the domestic water demand of the campus. LCA of the system revealed that electricity production from fuel oil, chemical usage (mainly phosphoric acid), and brine release to ocean are the system’s main environmental burdens. Overall results suggest that hybrid systems could be an alternative and sustainable approach for future water and electricity demand in regions where sufficient saline water and solar resources are present.