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What is the Periodic Table Showing? Periodicity

The INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables

There are thousands of periodic tables in web space, but this is the only comprehensive database of periodic tables & periodic system formulations. If you know of an interesting periodic table that is missing, please contact the database curator: Mark R. Leach Ph.D.

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Year:  2025 PT id = 1345, Type = element

Actinium: The Most Annoying Element for the Rare-Earth Industry?

Koen Binnemans writing on Linkedin:

Actinium: The Most Annoying Element for the Rare Earth Industry?

Rare-earth elements (REEs) are often accompanied by radioactive uranium and thorium in their ores. This is particularly problematic for monazite, which can contain more than 15 wt% thorium dioxide. The REE mineral steenstrupine, which occurs in large quantities in Greenland, is so rich in uranium that it can even be mined as a uranium ore. Due to strict safety regulations governing the handling of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), the thorium content of REE ores poses major challenges for REE producers. Thorium is treated as radioactive waste, and its disposal can be very expensive.

It is important to realize that most radioactivity issues are not caused directly by thorium or uranium themselves, since their primary isotopes (thorium-232, uranium-235, and uranium-238) are all very long?lived, but by their radioactive daughter nuclides formed through decay chains.

Most of these radioactive daughter elements have chemical properties sufficiently different from those of the REEs that they can be removed using conventional hydrometallurgical techniques.

However, actinium presents a particular challenge because its chemical properties are similar to those of the REEs, especially lanthanum. The isotope actinium-227, formed by the decay of uranium-235, has a half-life of 22 years. During REE separation, actinium tends to follow lanthanum. In a solvent-extraction circuit, actinium accumulates in the SX battery along with the lanthanum stream.

Although the concentration of actinium is usually very low, lanthanum must be purified as thoroughly as possible, because one important application of lanthanum is in scintillator detectors for ionizing radiation (e.g. (LaBr3:Ce3+ or LaCl3:Ce3+). If lanthanum is contaminated with radioactive actinium, the resulting detector will exhibit significant background noise and therefore poor performance. Another issue is that REE concentrates produced at mining sites may exceed legal radioactivity limits for export to REE refineries due to the presence of actinium.

Therefore, REE processing companies have developed processes to remove actinium from REE concentrates or feed solutions for SX operations. Limited information is available in the scientific literature, but more can be found in patent documents. For instance, read the following patent of CARESTER, https://lnkd.in/evXsXzDB

It should also be noted that actinium has useful applications: actinium?225 is used in radiopharmaceuticals for the precision treatment of tumors. See: PANTERA

SOLVOMET R&I Centre SIM2 KU Leuven

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Wikipedia) Blue Cerenkov radiation emitted by a sample of actinium-225

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