Abstract
This paper describes the on-going pilot scale development of a new treatment process designed to remove radium-226 from uranium milling effluents. Presently, decants from Canadian uranium mining and milling tailings areas are treated with barium chloride to remove radium-226 prior to discharge into the environment. This is usually accomplished in large natural or man-made ponds which provide an opportunity for a (Ba,Ra)SO4 precipitate to form and subsequently settle. Sand filtration is sometimes used as a polishing step. This new process differs from conventional and other experimental processes in that it involves the use of a fluidized bed to facilitate the deposition of a (Ba,Ra)SO4 precipitate on a granular medium of high surface area. As a stand-alone treatment process, the new process is consistently able to reduce incoming radium-226 activity levels by 90-99%. Effluent levels of 10 pCi/L (0.370 Bq/L) or less have been achieved, depending on the influent activity levels. Recent testing of the process as a polishing step has demonstrated radium removal efficiencies up to 60% when the process influent was already less than 5 pCi/L (0.185 Bq/L). The process has been operated at temperatures ranging from 26°C down to 0.3°C with no reduction in efficiency. In contrast to treatment times in the order of days for conventional settling pond systems and hours for mechanical stirred tank/filtration systems, the new process is able to achieve these radium removal efficiencies in times on the order of one minute.
Radium removal from mine waters with the application of barium chloride and zeolite: comparison of efficiency
