RE:RE:Letter to Bill Gates, Ucore, Thorium dry cell reactorAside from the hilarious "Dear Bill" the utter stupidity is pitiful on numerous counts, just plain wrong.
Firstly it is NOT, repeat NOT, the separation process that is the major environmental challenge, it is the two pre processes of concentration plus Crack & Leach, ten minutes research & half a brain would work that out.
Aside from the waste material taken off to tails in the concentrate stage, which carry the same radiation levels as the ore, by far the most toxic stage is C&L where the concentrate is subject to acid & heat to crack the REE from the gangue which is then sorted into separate streams in the leaching stage.
Virtually ALL the nasties go with the gangue to residues, the REE in relatively clean solution is THEN fed into SX, or whatever other mode of separation.
The ignorant propaganda that SX is "dirty" is utter nonsense, water & kero basically, and pretty much recycled. Lynas actually has to CLEAN the water it draws from the local river, and then returns it in a far cleaner state than the original. Hard data available from local authorities to totally verify that.
And that applies equally to the C&L stage at LAMP, the off gas & scrubbers are pretty much the most expensive plant at LAMP, contantly monitored without a breach 8.5yrs, and steadily improved from base, like pretty much everything else.
And if any cared to stop navel gazing they'd find the Chinese situation very similar, virtually all old, dirty plant has been closed down over recent years and companies like CNRE have been reprocessing tails to concentrate past 2/3 years. Lynas is at the final stage of dewatering their first tailings dam and will start processing to concentrate, the tails being 7% TREO vs 0.6% Joke'n Bokan.
BTW, they've found scandium in the tailings in recoverable quantities so that will be one of many interesting side projects.