alright,what now?, page-83

THE SECRET IS MASS BALANCE GUYS

There's a mistake being made here repeatedly that I'd like to clear up once and for all. Not having a go, just unpacking some analysis.
Here are 3 examples from this thread:

**how a feed stock of > 6 Bq/g ends up with a waste (residue) of under 2 Bq/g unless that rare earth extracted is > 6 Bq/g.

** Not too hard to work out where a couple of bq/g go, given permitable levels in the other two waste streams, i.e. waste water up to 1bq/g & gas emission.

**it does not change the fact that < 6 bq/g can not enter the lamp with residue exiting @ < 2 bq unless the rare earths have the bulk in them (I didn't think they did).

Here's a back of envelope estimate ignoring water (hydration) and oxygen (metals/oxides)

So what are the inputs and outputs from LAMP in full production??

Outputs first (IAEA Report):
22 kt REO
54 kt FGD
170 kt NUF
64 kt WLP
For a grand total of 310 ktonne of (dry) "STUFF" output.

Inputs:
Concentrate needs a little bit of work. It's 40% REE but let's say 33% (/40%) recovered. Then we need about 66 k tonne of concentrate to produce our 22 kt of REE.

SO THE SOLID MASS OUTPUT FROM LAMP IS NEARLY 5X THE MASS OF CONCENTRATE USED!!!

The rest of this mass comes from Malaysia: air, water and (mostly) non-radioactive chemicals.
So there's a huge dilution of the original concentrate mass but (sadly) the Th and U mostly end up in a waste stream about as massive as the concentrate.

Back to the quotes above:
** It's diluted and none of the product is radioactive
** No need to assume any ends up in water or gas emissions although a tiny bit might
** Same as 1st.

By the way, I think this exercise also explains why we take the concentrate to the chemicals and not vice-versa!!