Rio could have quite easily spent over $20M on initial studies for Jadar. The development was costed at $2.4B according to this
Rio webpage. This would be about 0.8% of the project cost and would equate to the completion of a concept level study, including some pilot plant work. The total EPCM (engineering, project and construction management) portion of a project like this is normally in the order of 12% to 18% - for Tier 1 players, it's usually at the higher end.
I don't know much about processing Jadarite, but Rio had set up a research team to look at it, and the mineral is referred to as "a unique new mineral". Anything with uniqueness and requiring dedicated research starts to ratchet up the risk profile on a these types of project. Here's a
link to the information on the research work into jadarite.
If they started hitting walls when researching the refining for jadarite, that'd give them a greater incentive to start looking for decent 'safe to process' spodumene deposits. This would be especially true if it was found that the processing costs of jadarite were higher than that of spodumene. The tier 1 producers rely on having top notch deposits and low processing costs so they can stay in business during the boom bust cycles. When they financially model projects, they usually make an investment decision based on the cost of mining and processing plus a margin of approximately 20%. Their corporate guard rails force them into staying with safe, low cost processing routes so they can comfortably survive downturns while other producers go to the wall.
The more I think about, the more convinced I become that Rio have looked at the Tambourah aerials, noted potential intercepts of between 10 to 40 metres, observed the rock chip results, and are now going to wait and see what happens with the maiden drill programme. If there's a positive result, I think Rio will coming knocking on the door for Tambourah. It'll be interesting to see what plays out.
All just my opinions only.
GLTAH.
