Uranium Waste Rock Cleaning
Brad Bozzetti, Gavin Davis, AG Minetti
Open-pit and underground uranium mining involve the generation of millions of tons of waste rock, which not only poses a risk to human health, but is often left behind to occupy usable space. Waste rock that contains less than 0.12 weight percent of uranium will be referred to as “sub-ore” material because there are radioactive quantities present. This project aims to extract the leftover uranium and decay products from sub-ore material. The easiest method to extract the uranium and transform the waste rock into usable material is with a chemical solution. Using the volume of waste rock generated from the Ranger Uranium Mine in Australia as a basis, the chemical solution would be poured over a pile of pulverized sub-ore and trickle down to extract uranium. This solution will be pumped out and the desired products will be extracted. The solution chosen is a phosphonic acid, for mobilization, mixed with dodecane oil, for migration. The mixture containing uranium is then combined with water. When the uranium migrates to the water due to a higher affinity, the density difference naturally separates the solvent-oil and water. The solvent-oil is collected and reused for the next batch of pulverized sub-ore, and the water is sent for uranium extraction. This process may take multiple passes for full extraction. Our pilot scale volume is a 40-foot shipping container from which we can ideally extract a maximum 58.5 kilograms of uranium per second, assuming total mobilization and a flawless system. Further economic analysis will determine if this project is a practical solution.
Nuclear Propulsion for Mars
Cole Nelson, James Lambos, Wen Runxia
Mars is at the frontier of human exploration and eventual colonization of our solar system. With current rocketry practices and technologies, Mars seems but a far-off dream. This is, in part, because of the massive inefficiency of current chemical propulsion technology. However, nuclear energy has the capability of getting rockets to mars with less fuel because of its high energy density and low fuel usage through ion propulsion. For our senior design, we propose the idea of designing a full fast-spectrum fission power system outfitted for a hypothetical Mars cargo mission. Through the methods of Monte Carlo reactor physics code, basic astronautical calculations, and control volume analysis, we were able to calculate the total mass and trip time of our design. With our calculations we found the payload to launch mass ratio of our design is 10x higher with a decrease in trip time of 15% than that of heavy payload launch vehicles employed today. However, the cost estimates far exceed said heavy payload launch vehicles. Therefore, we can conclude that with a more rigorous analysis of our design including a more cost-efficient approach, nuclear electric propulsion could outperform chemical propulsion in almost every way.
