On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

• DOI: 10.3390/su10010235
• Publication Date: 2018-01-17T17:17:11Z
• Authors: Frederik Reitsma; Peter Woods; Martin Fairclough; Yongjin Kim; Harikrishnan Tuls...; Luis Lopez; Yanhua Zheng; Ahmed Hussein; Gerd Brinkmann; Nils Haneklaus; Anand Kacham; Tumuluri Sreenivas; Agus Sumaryanto; Kurnia Trinopiawan; Nahhar Al Khaledi; Ahmad Zahari; Adil El Yahyaoui; Jamil Ahmad; Rolando Reyes; Katarzyna Kiegiel; Noureddine Abbes; Dennis Mwalongo; Eduardo Greaves
• Keywords: info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/333.7; 13. Climate action; 11. Sustainability; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 333.7; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy; 12. Responsible consumption

A number of primary ores such as phosphate rock, gold-, copper- and rare earth ores contain considerable amounts of accompanying uranium and other critical materials. Energy neutral mineral processing is the extraction of unconventional uranium during primary ore processing to use it, after enrichment and fuel production, to generate greenhouse gas lean energy in a nuclear reactor. Energy neutrality is reached if the energy produced from the extracted uranium is equal to or larger than the energy required for primary ore processing, uranium extraction, -conversion, -enrichment and -fuel production. This work discusses the sustainability of energy neutral mineral processing and provides an overview of the current progress of a multinational research project on that topic conducted under the umbrella of the International Atomic Energy Agency.