Thorium could have powered India
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04/10/2012
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Pioneer (New Delhi)
More than 2,00,000 tonnes of precious thorium oxide, which could have met at least half the energy requirements of the country for more than 50 years, is missing from India. During the period 2002 to 2012, the quantity of monazite present along the Indian coastline has come down by more than 2.1 million tonnes. This monazite, quite rich in thorium, is reported to have been mostly exported to other countries by a powerful mining cartel.
On November 30, 2011,V Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), told the Lok Sabha that Indian Rare Earths Ltd (IREL), a public sector undertaking under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), is the only company exporting monazite. “Beach sands contain heavy minerals such as ilmenite, rutile,leucoxene, garnet, sillimanite, zircon and monazite (which is radioactive and a source of thorium). Ilmenite, rutile, leucoxene, garnet, sillimanite and zircon are separated from beach sands and these individual heavy minerals — free of monazite — are being exported.
As per the latest notification of the Department of Atomic Energy vide ref. S.O.61(E) dated January 20, 2006, these heavy minerals are delisted from the prescribed substances list and hence, for the handling of these minerals, licence from Department of Atomic Energy under the Atomic Energy (Working of the Mines, Minerals and Handling of Prescribed Substance) Rules, 1984 is not required,” said the Minister.
The Minister also said that consequent to delisting of ilmenite, rutile, zircon etc. from the list of prescribed substances, no licences or permission is required from DAE for these substances.
“However, under the guidelines framed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), individual processors of beach sand have to separate and safely keep the monazite content of such sand. No individual or entity is permitted to process monazite in any manner without a licence from DAE. Further, no licences have been given to any private party to process monazite and separate thorium,” said the Minister.
But the Minister did not tell whether companies keep the sand containing monazite with them after they have processed and extracted other minerals from the sand. Scientists and engineers said they were in the dark about the quantity of monazite extracted by private companies and whether it has been exported or not.
Prof KT Damodaran, marine geologist and former director, School of Marine Geology and Geophysics, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), said that no proper accounting has been done on the amount of monazite generated and what happened to it.
Scientists disagree with the Minister. “Heavy mineral deposits often contain relatively high levels of radioactive elements (thorium and uranium). It is difficult to obtain clean separation of ilmenite and monazite and physical intergrowths of the two minerals are not uncommon. As a result, ilmenite concentrates obtained from such deposits often contain high levels of thorium and uranium,” writes J Nell, mineral scientist, in a research paper.
The Atomic Minerals Directorate For Exploration and Research of the DAE, claims India’s coastline has a deposit of 10.7 million tonnes of monazite from which it is possible to extract 8,46,477 tonnes of thorium metal. This was also announced by Minister Narayanasamy in the Lok Sabha on March 14, 2012. He said the monazite is spread across States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh account for 2.16 million tonnes and 3.74 million tonnes monazite respectively.
But Prof HK Naik, head, Department of Mining, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, quotes a 2002 study by the Atomic Minerals Department which says the Indian coastline had a deposit of 12.8 million tonnes of monazite. That means over a period of 10 years, India has lost 2.1 million tonnes of monazite.
“One tonne of monazite has 18 per cent thorium oxide present in it. This means every tonne of monazite would yield 180 kilo thorium oxide. If this is the case, 2,34,421 tonnes of thorium oxide should be accounted for by the DAE,” said Prof Naik. This is in addition to the thorium lost through the export of ilmenite, zircon, garnet and rutile, which all contain a lot of thorium.
VV Mineral (VVM), the Tamil Nadu company, has exported through Tuticorin Port alone 15,87,806 tonnes of minerals during December 1999 to May 2009. “What about the sand they export illegally through other routes? The company website itself claims that their annual export is 3,92,000 tonnes of mineral. The quantity of minerals exported by them during the last 15 years would be a mind-boggling figure,” said V Sundaram, the first chairman of Tuticorin Port Trust.
Ajith G Nair, a geology research scholar from Thiruvananthapuram, who did his Ph.D on the rich mineral sands of Kerala and Tamil Nadu coasts, said he was shocked with the kind of open looting of the mineral-rich sand by local contractors hand-in-glove with politicians and bureaucrats. “The beaches in both the States are like free supply centres. I saw truckloads of sand being removed from the beaches throughout the night. The local residents had been terrorised and they were silent,” said Nair.
The IREL officials are silent about the monazite which the private enterprises were supposed to return to the Government. “It is a gentleman’s agreement and we have to believe what they tell us,” said
Dr CSP Iyer, former director, BARC, Trombay. It is an open secret that some of the senior engineers of the IREL and the DAE work as consultants to the private mining companies at exorbitant fees, which is 10 times more than what they get as monthly remuneration.
How the private companies flourish at the expense of our public sector undertakings (PSUs) is best described by the profit they generate by exporting these precious minerals and other materials. The Indian Rare Earths which has 2,700 hectares of mineable land under its control exported minerals worth Rs 97.7 crore during the period 2007 to 2010. But VV Minerals and its sister concerns, which own just 187.1 hectares earned Rs 408.1 crore during the same period. This is the data furnished by the Chemical and Allied Products Export Promotion Council of India (CAPEX IL) under the union ministry of commerce.
When asked about the price of thorium, Prof Rajamanickam, and Prof OP Varma, 81, president of the Indian Geology Congress were unanimous in their opinion. “Never ever ask the price of thorium. You find out whether any country would allow their thorium reserves to be sold like any other commodities,” they said.