Strateco will face uphill battle...
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Thorium will become primary fuel used in Nuclear reactors....this will put Uranium prices lower....thus making low-grade resources of U308 un-economical.
Full article can be read here....
https://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
Thorium
(Updated March 2011)
- Thorium is much more abundant in nature than uranium.
- Thorium can also be used as a nuclear fuel through breeding to fissile uranium-233.
Thorium continues to be a tanatalising possibility for use in nuclearpower reactors, though for many years India has been the only sponsorof major research efforts to use it. Other endeavours include thedevelopment of the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor concept being carried outby US company Thorium Power (now Lightbridge Corporation) with Russiancollaboration.
In mid-2009, AECL signed agreements with three Chinese entities todevelop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel in the Candu reactors atQinshan in China. Another mid-2009 agreement, between Areva andLightbridge Corporation, was for assessing the use of thorium fuel inAreva's EPR, drawing upon earlier research. Thorium can also be used inGeneration IV and other advanced nuclear fuel cycle systems.
Nature and sources of thorium
Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metaldiscovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, whonamed it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. It is found in smallamounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times moreabundant than uranium. Soil commonly contains an average of around 6parts per million (ppm) of thorium.
Thorium-232 (Th-232) decays very slowly (its half-life is about threetimes the age of the Earth) but other thorium isotopes occur in its andin uranium's decay chains. Most of these are short-lived and hence muchmore radioactive than Th-232, though on a mass basis they arenegligible.
When pure, thorium is a silvery white metal that retains its lustrefor several months. However, when it is contaminated with the oxide,thorium slowly tarnishes in air, becoming grey and eventually black.Thorium oxide (ThO2), also called thoria, has oneof the highest melting points of all oxides (3300°C). When heated inair, thorium metal turnings ignite and burn brilliantly with a whitelight. Because of these properties, thorium has found applications inlight bulb elements, lantern mantles, arc-light lamps, weldingelectrodes and heat-resistant ceramics. Glass containing thorium oxidehas a high refractive index and dispersion and is used in high qualitylenses for cameras and scientific instruments.
The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphatemineral, monazite, which contains up to about 12% thorium phosphate, but6-7% on average. Monazite is found in igneous and other rocks but therichest concentrations are in placer deposits, concentrated by wave andcurrent action with other heavy minerals. World monazite resources areestimated to be about 12 million tonnes, two-thirds of which are inheavy mineral sands deposits on the south and east coasts of India.There are substantial deposits in several other countries (see Tablebelow). Thorium recovery from monazite usually involves leaching withsodium hydroxide at 140°C followed by a complex process to precipitatepure ThO2.
Thorite (ThSiO4) is another common mineral. A large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals is in Idaho.
The 2007 IAEA-NEA publication Uranium 2007: Resources, Production and Demand(often referred to as the 'Red Book') gives a figure of 4.4 milliontonnes of total known and estimated resources, but this excludes datafrom much of the world. Data for reasonably assured and inferredresources recoverable at a cost of $80/kg Th or less are given in thetable below. Some of the figures are based on assumptions and surrogatedata for mineral sands, not direct geological data in the same way asmost mineral resources.