Rare earth and thorium mineralogy and geochemistry at the Alces Lake property, Saskatchewan: Towards green mining

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This application requests funds from the NSERC Engage Grant Program to create a new partnership between the University of Saskatchewan and Appia Energy Corp. (Toronto, Ontario) to research an environmentally friendly approach to mining rare earth elements (REE) on the Alces Lake property, northern Saskatchewan. The demand for REE has been increasing due to its widespread use in modern technology such as wind turbines, cellphones, televisions, computers, and electric vehicles. Mining high grade REE ores at the Alces Lake property will allow Canada to join the small list of nations that produce REE. However, REE deposits are often associated with elevated contents of thorium, a radioactive element. At present it is a common practice to dump thorium as a solid residue in waste rock piles and mine tailings. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in thorium for its use as a nuclear fuel. Through the advent of the thorium nuclear fuel cycle, it is possible to power reactors with thorium as a by-product from REE mining. The proposed study will investigate the mineralogy and geochemistry of four new REE-Th zones at the Alces Lake property, discovered by the industrial partner in its 2017 field campaign. One novel aspect of the proposed research is the characterization of the thorium distribution in the REE-Th ores at Alces Lake, which remains poorly understood in REE deposits in general and is analytically challenging due to its possible occurrences in exotic minerals. The benefits of the proposed research with direct relevance to thorium extraction are two-fold for Appia Energy Corp.: 1) it will produce thorium as a by-product to make the REE mining of the Alces Lake deposit more cost effective; 2) it will lower the environmental footprint from REE mining and make the mine tailings less radioactive.