By David Winning
Sparton Resources Inc., a small Toronto mining company, is betting that a global renaissance
in nuclear power will create a market for an unlikely fuel source: waste coal ash.
Natural coal contains trace amounts of uranium, and when it is burned to produce electricity,
varying amounts of the radioactive element are left behind in the ash. Sparton has developed
a method for recovering it and says a project under way at a coal-fired power station in
southwestern China is yielding uranium that could be reused as a fuel for nuclear reactors.
The company is exploring other sites in China, South Africa and in Eastern Europe, where ash was
buried when Soviet-era power plants were shut down, to determine whether they have similar potential.
Tight Supplies?
Sparton's efforts come as concerns about climate change thrust nuclear power back into the
spotlight as a way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. Some analysts and mining companies
are predicting a supply shortage of uranium within four to eight years if, as expected, China
and other Asian nations accelerate programs to build nuclear reactors and European nations
such as Sweden abandon their moratoriums on new nuclear plants.
Extracting uranium from coal deposits isn't new: Union Carbide Corp. and Kerr McGee Corp.
did it in North Dakota in the 1960s, selling what they produced to the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission. But interest in these and other secondary uranium-recovery techniques often
hinges on the benchmark price for U3O8, a common compound of uranium.
The spot uranium price surged to a record $138 a pound in 2007, the year Sparton announced
plans to test and possibly commercialize uranium recovery at a coal-fired power station in China's
Yunnan province. Since then, the spot price has plunged to about $42 a pound amid the global
economic slump, though it remains far above its early 2001 level of approximately $7. Long-term
contract prices, which make up the majority of uranium sales, are holding at about $61 a pound.
Although Sparton says its Yunnan project is producing uranium at a cost that would appear to be
economically competitive, some analysts say the recent pullback in uranium prices could limit
the technology's appeal, at least for now.
"Any nontraditional form of uranium production can and will only compete if the production costs
are equal to or lower than traditional U3O8 mining and milling methods," says Jonathan Hinze,
vice-president of international operations at Roswell, Ga.-based Ux Consulting Co. LLC.
Coal-fired power stations produce more than 700 million tons of ash and other waste matter
annually, with much of it stockpiled or disposed of in landfills. In China, more than 2.7 billion
tons of ash sit unused, according to a presentation delivered in May in the U.S. by experts at
the East China University of Science and Technology.
Not all waste ash is suitable for uranium recovery. Coal needs a uranium content of at least
50 parts per million to be comparable to a low-grade uranium deposit, says Robert Finkelman,
a research scientist with the University of Texas at Dallas. In the U.S., the average coal
deposit has only about two parts per million. In addition, some coal-fired power plants inject lime
into burners to control emissions of sulfur. That can leave large amounts of excess lime or
calcium carbonate in the ash, which makes it harder and more expensive to get at the uranium.
Sparton says it is confident that its Yunnan project, in which it has invested more than
$5 million to date, can overcome these and other challenges.
Three power plants located near its site are burning coal with a uranium content averaging
65 parts per million, and the lime content in the leftover ash is low, Sparton says.
The company is recovering the uranium at a cost of $20 to $35 a pound, says A. Lee Barker,
Sparton's president and chief executive officer. That makes the project economically
competitive at the current spot uranium prices of about $42 a pound.
The company has been able to hold down capital costs. That's partly because the coal feeding
the plants comes from an existing mine, so it doesn't have to build one.
To produce uranium at the site, Sparton puts the ash in acid in order to dissolve, and then extract,
the uranium. Sparton says it can recover 70% of the uranium in the ash at Yunnan using this method.
Then there are the environmental benefits. Sparton says uranium-extraction facilities like the
one at Yunnan could help clean up ash piles that have been classified as hazardous because
of their high uranium content. The material left over would then be suitable for use in cement
or as a filler for concrete blocks, it says.
A Way In
Conventional uranium mining in China, which plans to increase its nuclear capacity at least
fourfold by 2020, is closed to foreign companies. Focusing on waste ash has enabled Sparton
to overcome this hurdle, as has its choice of joint-venture partner?state-owned China National
Nuclear Corp., the country's top nuclear power developer by capacity.
Mr. Barker says Sparton could be producing up to two million pounds of uranium in China
annually after three years, enough to fuel a new reactor. That forecast reflects the waste-coal-ash
project in Yunnan and other secondary recovery activities in which Sparton is involved.
Some mining companies?Australia's PacMag Metals Ltd. and closely held NuCoal Energy Corp.
of Saskatchewan, Canada, for example?are looking into whether they can improve the economics
of coal-related uranium-recovery projects by extracting other valuable metals at the same time.
Some coal deposits may contain commercial amounts of metals such as germanium, which is
used in products ranging from semiconductors to solar panels.
? Mr. Winning is a news editor for Dow Jones Newswires in Sydney. He can be reached at david.winning@dowjones.com. |