Economic evaluation of inactive uranium mill tailings, New Rifle Site, Rifle, Colorado

Technical Report · Wed Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:6694116

Teel, J H ^[1]

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1. Mountain States Research and Development, Tucson, AZ (United States)

Mountain States Research and Development was contracted on March 1, 1981 to make an economic evaluation study at each of 12 abandoned uranium mill tailings sites in the western states. The objective of this work was to obtain the data necessary at each site to determine the possible revenue that could be derived from reprocessing the tailings. To accomplish this objective a drilling and sampling program was established for each site to determine the total amount of tailings and subbase material available for treatment and the amount of recoverable uranium, vanadium and molybdenum. These three metals were selected due to their common occurrence in uranium ores and common extractability in the leaching process. Laboratory leaching was then conducted on the samples obtained to determine the extractability of each of these metals and the optimum plant process to be applied. As the metal contents were generally low and represented mineral that had not been leached during previous processing, the economic evaluation is limited to consideration of the direct capital and operating costs required in connection with processing of each respective site material. Excavating, transportation and disposal of the material from each site in an environmentally acceptable location and manner was not within the scope of this project. This report contains the results of the investigations of the New Rifle Site in Colorado.

• Research Organization: USDOE Albuquerque Field Office, NM (United States). Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project Office; Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States); Mountain States Research and Development, Tucson, AZ (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-82AL14086
• OSTI ID: 6694116
• Report Number(s): DOE/UMTRA-176; ON: DE93010599
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
MILL TAILINGS
PROCESSING
MOLYBDENUM
MATERIALS RECOVERY
URANIUM
VANADIUM
ABANDONED SITES
CAPITALIZED COST
COLORADO
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
FEED MATERIALS PLANTS
LEACHING
NUMERICAL DATA
OPERATING COST
ACTINIDES
COST
DATA
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
DISSOLUTION
ECONOMICS
ELEMENTS
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT
METALS
NORTH AMERICA
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
SEPARATION PROCESSES
SOLID WASTES
TAILINGS
TRANSITION ELEMENTS
USA
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WASTE PROCESSING
WASTES
051000* - Nuclear Fuels- Economic
Industrial
& Business Aspects