The Santa Quiteria project - an environmental impact assessment of its phosphogypsum stack

The Santa Quiteria Project is located in Ceara state, Brazil. Actually, it is the biggest Brazilian uranium mine project. A peculiarity of this project is the association of uranium with phosphate and the mining and processing of both together by two enterprises. A private company will be responsible for the production of phosphoric acid and a state owned company will be responsible for the production yellow cake. At full capacity, the plant will generate 10% of Brazil's total annual phosphoric acid production and 1,500 tons of yellow cake per year. The reaction, by which phosphoric acid is produced, generates phosphogypsum (PG) as a by-product. The ratio of phosphogypsum to phosphoric acid is around 5 to 1. After all the phosphate has been extracted and processed, it is expected that some 37 million tons of phosphogypsum with 13 Bq/g of radium 226 will be produced. Aiming to assess the potential radioactive impact of this PG stack on the workers and surrounding inhabitants, a generic assessment was performed by RESRAD offsite and onsite codes. A hypothetical farmer scenario was used to calculate potential dose out of the project boundary and over the stack piles, after the shutdown of the project. The annual exposure dose of workers according to the progress of processing was also evaluated. In conservative approach the potential public dose was estimated as 2.5 mSv/y. This study identified the rainfall erosion index, the geometric shape of the PG stack and the fish consumption as parameters where an improvement of information and understanding could improve the quality of the dose assessment. The worker dose estimation stressed the need for action plan to mitigate worker exposures on the stack. In addition, the onsite public dose pointed out the importance of a planning for remediating the area after the shutdown of the plant, in order to assure that public and environment health will not be affected by the presence of the PG stack. (author)