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My understanding is that the main radioactive waste from rare earth mining is Thorium - a pretty easy to handle material (the US just buries it in landfills, wh
by SquirrelOnFire 8y ago
My understanding is that the main radioactive waste from rare earth mining is Thorium - a pretty easy to handle material (the US just buries it in landfills, which is enough to contain it) with the potential to be a valuable resource in itself once LFTRs get off the ground again, which China and India are working pretty hard on.
- mchannon 8y agoThe main radioactive waste from rare earth mining is indeed Thorium. It is not a pretty easy to handle material. Check out https://projects.newyorker.com/story/radioactive-nyc/ https://projects.newyorker.com/story/radioactive-nyc/ to learn how Thorium from rare earth refining a century ago made NYC into a radioactive waste site. Thorium is not responsibly managed in landfills. LFTR's have never "gotten off the ground". Even if they achieved some extraordinary combination of breakthroughs over the next 10 years, we wouldn't come close to using all the available Thorium that exists near the REE we have. As a fertile (but not fissile) element, Thorium demand will be inextricably linked to Uranium supply, even for LFTR.