Reitsma, and 22 co-authors, reported in 2018 that 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. The authors discuss 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.
The authors concluded that decreasing ore grades that result in much larger energy requirements for processing these ores as well as increasing public awareness regarding the way this energy is produced creates global interest in energy neutral mineral processing as a more sustainable way to power mineral development. At present, more than a dozen member states of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigate forms of energy neutral mineral processing. This work aims to provide a brief overview of the latest developments of these investigations. At present, the most prominently investigated ores are phosphate rock, rare earth element (REE) ores, copper ore and tin slag. High temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) such as the HTR-PM currently constructed in China and concentrated solar power (CSP) plants such as the Gemasolar plant operating in Spain are foreseen as greenhouse gas lean energy sources. Besides technical challenges, regulatory burdens have been identified as the
largest challenge for energy neutral mineral processing.
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