what you are missing is that the Tomie expansion project will...

what you are missing is that the Tomie expansion project will cost about $85m more than what ALK originally costed.

That makes Tomie not as profitable as you think. To bring Tomie as efficient operation as it used to be ALK needs to discover more resources in the area which will improve the metrics of the expansion project back to where they used to be prior to blowing up the budget. Positive thing is the area is most likely to produce another 1Moz - 1.5Moz which will make the costs blowouts insignificant from economics point of view. Only the reputational damage will be left which is a segway to:

It also eroded the confidence in the MD and the BoDs to deliver on small upgrade so who will support ALK to deliver on time and on budget 10Mt plant with massive mining operation? Hence why it is best if ALK finds a JV partner who will fund the project for ~80% stake while ALK takes risk free 20% profit.

But you are 100%on the money with "Don't get me wrong, it's a bull market asset (less so if they can find a higher grade starter pit somewhere - even 10-20% higher grade would probably do) but in my view it certainly has a non-zero value."
And for that to happen it comes down to what I have been saying for years - needs more exploration. We may be lucky if Murga produces shallow scarn deposit at around 2g/t to support the first 3-5 years of the operation and provide decent blend to the Boda and Kaiser pits.