ARBOK-Thorium

Overview

Thorium is the "extra" metal at the fringes of geology that nobody needed for decades, until it turned out it might be the key to a new nuclear age. Identified world resources are about 6.4 million tons (World Nuclear Association, USGS), with the US in the top four alongside India, Brazil and Australia. Yet the real market is tiny: about 7,200 tons of consumption in 2024 and roughly $92 million in revenue, forecast at 13,500 tons and ~$185 million by 2034.

The United States has colossal geological resources — 600,000 tons — and zero domestic production. The USGS thorium report for 2025 states that in 2024 not a single US plant recovered thorium from ore; all domestic consumption was supplied by imports; monazite, where produced, moved as a byproduct in heavy mineral concentrates without thorium extraction. Imports of thorium compounds in 2024 were 4.4 tons for about $120,000 (2023: 13.3 tons for $928,000), at an average import price around $27 per kilogram for compounds from France. USGS does not compute apparent consumption at all — it records "NA". Inside the US thorium is not a market, it is statistical noise.

The thorium is not missing — it is buried. In the US the key word is phosphogypsum: a man-made deposit with known chemistry, roads and infrastructure, holding slightly concentrated thorium that nobody has been able to take out. Arbok-Evaporation is the technology that changes that.

Applications

• Primary feedstock: phosphogypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O) stacks — the direct byproduct of the wet-process phosphoric acid route, classified by EPA as TENORM (technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material) because it contains uranium, thorium and radium.
• Geography: Florida as the center of this universe, Louisiana to a lesser extent; internationally Turkey, which also has large phosphogypsum waste volumes that are an environmental pollution problem.
• Outputs: thorium concentrate, plus uranium, radium, rare earths and other heavies in the concentrated residue; 4–5 recovered acids; crystallized pure gypsum; recovered water down to almost distilled quality, reusable in the wet process.
• End use of the thorium: fuel for thorium molten-salt, high-temperature or hybrid reactors; and the existing small-volume uses — catalysis, optics, ceramics, welding electrodes, medicine.
• Other thorium hosts named: heavy mineral sands, phosphate ores, coal, granites, industrial wastes.

Operating Principle

Arbok-Evaporation is a machine for separating water and volatile components, but in a stack-processing scheme it does not work alone. Phosphogypsum enters a circuit with dissolution, recovery of 4–5 acids, crystallization of pure gypsum, and recovery of the entire water volume down to almost distilled quality, which is then reused in the wet process. Everything that did not leave with the steam and did not turn back into clean water — all the thorium, uranium, radium, rare earths and other heavies — ends up in a concentrated salt/solid residue, which is removed from the plant fractionally and separately, one component from another. The thorium precipitates out and then only needs to be collected.

The reason phosphogypsum is the right feedstock is chemical: when phosphate rock is attacked by sulfuric acid, about 80% of radium-226, 30% of thorium-232 and roughly 14% of uranium-238 end up in the phosphogypsum, with radionuclide concentrations in PG about one and a half times higher than in the original beneficiated ore. A typical sedimentary phosphate rock carries about 1–5 ppm thorium by mass, so PG retains and partially concentrates the thorium rather than dispersing it.

Limits stated in the source: Arbok-Evaporation alone is not sufficient — the scheme requires associated hydrometallurgy. The thorium content of 5–15 ppm in phosphogypsum is an assumption reasoned from the 1–5 ppm rock content and the up-to-30% retention factor, not a measured figure. The recovery factor of 60–70% is described as "realistic / adequate for such a scheme", not as a demonstrated result.

Key Parameters

| Parameter | Value |

|---|---|

| Feedstock | Phosphogypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O), TENORM class |

| Thorium partition into PG during wet-process attack | ~30% of Th-232 (alongside ~80% of Ra-226 and ~14% of U-238) |

| Radionuclide concentration in PG vs. beneficiated ore | ~1.5x higher |

| Thorium in sedimentary phosphate rock | ~1–5 ppm by mass |

| Assumed thorium content in PG | 5–15 ppm |

| Thorium recovery factor of the scheme | 60–70% of what is present in the processed volume |

| US annual phosphogypsum generation | ~30 million tons per year |

| Historic Florida stock | ~1 billion tons in about 25 giant stacks |

| Largest single complex | New Wales, Florida — more than 10 million tons of PG per year |

| Co-products | 4–5 acids, crystallized pure gypsum, recovered water to almost distilled quality, plus U, Ra, REE and other heavies in the residue |

| Fuel benchmark | ~1 ton of thorium sustains 1 GW of electric power for a year in a closed Th/U-233 molten-salt cycle |

| Energy consumption / throughput per unit | [требует уточнения из базы] |

| Product purity / concentrate grade | [требует уточнения из базы] |

| Unit footprint, service life | [требует уточнения из базы] |

Architecture and Components

A stack-processing circuit built around the Arbok-Evaporation module: dissolution of phosphogypsum → recovery of 4–5 acids → crystallization of pure gypsum → evaporation and recovery of the full water volume to near-distillate quality for reuse in the wet process → fractional, separated removal of the concentrated salt/solid residue containing thorium, uranium, radium and rare earths. Associated hydrometallurgy completes separation of the individual heavies. Equipment-level component list, module sizing and train layout: [требует уточнения из базы].

Advantages

• Resource access: turns officially worthless TENORM waste into a thorium source without opening a single new mine — purely by "sterilizing" existing phosphate wastes.
• Scale of the prize: the annual US PG flow alone yields 80–300 tons of thorium per year depending on grade scenario, against current US imports of 4.4 tons per year; a single Florida program covers domestic consumption dozens of times over.
• Environmental: every eliminated stack is a defused environmental bomb — the stacks carry a permanent cap of process water and grow every year.
• Co-product economics: thorium arrives as a strategic "bonus" to a reclamation project that also delivers acids, clean gypsum and near-distillate recycled water back into the wet process.
• Strategic: shifts thorium from toxic TENORM to domestic nuclear fuel; alternatively converts the US from a pure importer of rare earths and radioactive chemistry into a partial exporter of thorium concentrates.
• Infrastructure: the stacks are man-made deposits with known chemistry, existing roads and infrastructure — no exploration, no new mining permits.

Integrations

Sits directly on phosphogypsum stack processing — see ARBOK-PHOSPHOGYPSUM — and uses the platform's evaporation and salt-separation train: ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking), ARBOK-CRYSTALLIZER. Feeds nuclear-fuel applications: ARBOK-NUKE. The same residue stream carries rare earths and other heavies recovered by related cases: ARBOK-Scandium-REE, ARBOK-Phosphate.

Deployment & Operation

Deployment target is the existing phosphogypsum stacks in Florida and Louisiana, where infrastructure, roads and a permanent cap of process water are already in place. The circuit takes phosphogypsum in and returns acids, pure gypsum, near-distilled recycled water for reuse in the wet process, and a fractionated heavy residue. Two use modes follow from the source: reclamation of the ~1 billion ton historic Florida stock, and continuous processing of the ~30 million tons per year of new material. Commissioning timeline, staffing, permitting under TENORM rules: [требует уточнения из базы].

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

TRL 9 — проставлен Михаилом 2026-08-06.

TRL number is not stated in the source — . The source positions Arbok-Evaporation as an existing capability applied to a feedstock nobody has been able to process ("such technologies did not exist and still do not exist, except…"), with the thorium figures presented as scenario arithmetic on open USGS and EPA data rather than as plant results.

Market Potential

World identified thorium resources ~6.4 million tons; US resources 600,000 tons with zero domestic production. World consumption ~7,200 tons in 2024 at ~$92 million revenue, forecast 13,500 tons and ~$185 million by 2034. Average import price ~$27/kg for thorium compounds from France — tens of thousands of dollars per ton for technical product, more for high-purity grades.

The real market is not the metal but the reactor: the global thorium reactor market is already measured in hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of CAPEX, while the thorium actually consumed is a trivial mass. There is roughly 3–4 times more thorium than uranium in the Earth's crust, practically all of it the single isotope Th-232, ideal as a "mother" material for breeding U-233; correctly designed cycles give a far higher fuel utilization factor and far fewer long-lived transuranics. In molten-salt systems like LFTR, about 1 ton of thorium sustains 1 GW of electric power for a year with a closed cycle where U-233 is burned rather than discarded — against hundreds of tons of natural uranium for the same 1 GW·year in traditional generation.

China is the reference case: TMSR-LF1 in Gansu province, 2 MW thermal, liquid-fuel reactor on FLiBe salt with uranium and thorium, developed at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics — the only genuinely operating thorium MSR in the world with industrial infrastructure around it. First criticality October 2023; nominal 2 MW of heat by June 2024; in 2025 permission to load thorium and demonstrated conversion of Th-232 into U-233, with protactinium-233 observed as the intermediate.

Two market paths follow. Domestic: the Florida program feeds a US thorium branch — at the mid-range 170–210 t/year scenario it supports 170–210 GW of thorium capacity, and even the conservative 80–100 t/year gives 80–100 GW, against a current total US nuclear fleet of about 97 GW; a decision to convert 20–50 GW to thorium could be supplied entirely from Florida and part of Louisiana with margin. Export: if the US delays while China, India and Russia move ahead, thorium concentrate from phosphogypsum becomes a foreign-economic instrument — China will need either its own resources or imported concentrates, India has gigantic monazite resources but no fully built chemical chain for the thorium cycle, and Turkey has both the phosphogypsum problem and the feedstock for its own thorium power for decades.

Typical Project Economics

Scenario arithmetic on the annual US phosphogypsum flow of 30 million tons per year:

| Th grade in PG | Thorium contained per year | Recovered at 60–70% |

|---|---|---|

| 5 ppm (conservative) | 150 tons | ~80–100 tons/year |

| 10 ppm (mid-range) | 300 tons | ~170–210 tons/year |

| 15 ppm (aggressive) | 450 tons | ~250–300 tons/year |

Historic Florida stock of ~1 billion tons: 5,000 tons of thorium at 5 ppm, 10,000 tons at 10 ppm, 15,000 tons at 15 ppm. At ~70% realistic recovery through Arbok-Evaporation plus associated hydrometallurgy, that is 3,500–10,500 tons of thorium as a strategic bonus to the reclamation project — a reserve for hundreds of reactor-years.

Reference scale for value: US imports of 4.4 tons in 2024 were worth about $120,000; 13.3 tons in 2023 were worth $928,000; average $27/kg. Capex, opex and project-level revenue for an Arbok-Thorium installation: .

> Расхождение в источнике: годовое потребление США оценивается двояко — USGS фиксирует импорт 4.4 т в 2024 году, тогда как в тексте «спрос» назван 4–5 т в год. Обе цифры приведены как есть.

Risk Factors

• Arbok-Evaporation does not do the job alone — the scheme depends on associated hydrometallurgy that is not specified in the source.
• The 5–15 ppm thorium content in phosphogypsum is an assumption reasoned from rock grade and partition factors, not a measured value; the 60–70% recovery factor is an estimate, not a demonstrated result.
• Demand risk is the dominant one: the entire world market is ~7,200 tons and ~$92 million, and US "demand" is a few tons per year — the case only becomes large if a thorium reactor program is actually launched.
• Political dependency: the domestic scenario requires a decision in Washington to convert capacity to thorium; the source explicitly frames continued delay as the second scenario.
• Regulatory: phosphogypsum is TENORM under EPA classification — handling, processing and residue disposal are radiologically regulated.
• The residue concentrates radium-226 (about 80% of the ore's radium partitions into PG) and uranium alongside the thorium, so the concentrated fraction is more radioactive than the feed.
• No field reference for the thorium case is cited; all volumes are scenario arithmetic on open USGS and EPA data.
• Competitive/technological: China already holds the only working thorium MSR with industrial infrastructure and continues to build the lead.

Related Technologies

ARBOK-PHOSPHOGYPSUM · ARBOK-CRYSTALLIZER · ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) · ARBOK-NUKE · ARBOK-Scandium-REE · ARBOK-Phosphate