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An Inside Appear At Cameco’s Smith Ranch Uranium Facility
By John | July 15, 2010
Cameco Corp (NYSE: CCJ) may be the 800-pound gorilla from the uranium sector. Cameco is always to uranium what Wal-Mart is always to retailing, and what Saudi Aramco would be to petroleum. On a percentage basis, Cameco dominates its sector more so than either with the two. Cameco most likely has a lot more clout in turning off the electricity now powering your pc than any other company in the world.
This week, the spot cost of uranium rose to $40/pound, for the very first time because Ronald Reagan was president. That must help grow the uranium business in Wyoming by leaps and bounds. In Part 5, we look at the largest U.S. uranium producer, Cameco-owned Power Resources.
Understanding ‘In Situ Leach’ Uranium Extraction
“It took $284 million Canadian to build, and it operated with 546 people,” said Patrick Drummond, Plant Superintendent for Cameco subsidiary Power Resources’ Smith Ranch facility. He was pointing to Kerr McGee’s Smith Ranch underground mine for the wall across from desk, which was later converted into an ISL operation, initial run by Rio Algom. “This operation cost US$44 million to develop and 80 folks to start.” Drummond was referring towards the In Situ Leaching (ISL) uranium extraction facility, known as Smith Ranch. “That ought to give you the scale from the ISL versus an underground mine,” he explained.
The aging, but sprightly, Drummond knows his uranium. He’s worked in underground mines, open pit mines, and uranium mills since 1980. From 1996 towards the present day, he’s worked in Wyoming for Power Resources at the company’s ISL uranium extraction facility. “I started off within the coal mines in Scotland,” boasted Drummond, who claims he can spot a coal miner in a bar, just by looking in the veins in his hands. “I worked up in Elliot Lake as well as the massive underground mines up there.” Clasping his hands and looking lower, he seemed to apologize, “It’s also a massive environmental trouble to clean up, a main undertaking. Quirk Lake was 1 from the bigger mines up there. It cost a lot of money to clean it up.”
The New Face of Wyoming’s Uranium Mining could be the ISL uranium extraction method, also known as solution mining. The differences in between mining uranium underground and an ISL operation are both minor and vast. Both methods mine uranium beneath the surface. So both methods are underground mining. Nevertheless, which is where the similarities end. “With underground, you bring up the ore, grate it, crush it, and extract the uranium from the ore,” Drummond explained the basics of underground uranium mining. “That ore becomes waste, which is known as tailings. You then have to service these large tailings and then decommission.”
ISL is the new breed of mining. “With ISL, we do not do that,” continued Drummond in his day-long lecture to our editorial team throughout a VIP tour of the Smith Ranch facility. “To mine underground with ISL, you drill the holes where the uranium is and extract the uranium from the underground ore,” he said. “Then, you process that into yellowcake.”
It is not all wine and roses for Drummond, though. He pines away for his underground mines, “From a mining perspective, it is not mining so it isn’t as exciting. Drummond laughs, “ISL is like a water treatment plant. We take water out and remove some ions.” He makes it sound so simple, “We remove the water from the underground and remove the ions, being the uranium ion. Then, we put the water back under the ground.” All with the water goes back into the ground? Really no. Drummond explained, “We take our water out and we put 99 percent back in. The a single percent we call ‘bleed.’ It’s actually a control function.”
Drummond cites a lot more comparables, “To commence an underground mine, it would take a year to do the shaft prior to you could start mining. Then, there’s the development cost from the mill complex. You might have all that outlay of cost just before you can get any benefit. It’s expensive to do underground — $200 million plus – because with the upfront development costs.” From his perspective, the miner in Drummond has come to like solution mining. “ISL is easier. It can be a lot cheaper: less expensive capital costs and less operating expenditures. It can be much less labor intensive.” Asked about the deadly radon emissions, generally cited as a danger in underground mining, Drummond shot back, “This can be a zero emission facility.”
Analyzing the two methods, he said, “You can begin producing faster with an ISL operation. You start your initial header house, and you can start producing and make money.” He added, “So you get a return on your purchase faster.” What’s the downside? “We also recover less uranium with ISL,” Drummond admitted. “Some of Cameco’s mines in Saskatchewan are running around 5, 10, 15, and 27 percent uranium. In this area, or in an ISL, it runs less than 1 or two percent. It is really low.” Plus the uranium ore body must be found beneath the water table. He added, “You can only do ISL in rock that’s porous and has water in it in the first location.”
To put it within the simplest terms, billions of years ago, the uranium found its way into the underground aquifers of Wyoming’s sandstones. “We add oxygen and get the uranium back into solution,” Drummond remarked. “We complex it with CO2 to keep it in solution, and then bring it for the surface. We extract it with an ion exchange base.” According to Drummond, extracting uranium works about the very same principle as a water softener. “We add salts towards the resin to get the uranium to back off from the resin. Then, we take that uranium and make it into a final product called yellow cake.”
And why it can be called yellowcake? “Some of it can be yellow; some of it is green or dark green. Some of it is black,” Drummond patiently explained. “The color can be a function of how we dry it, not how we process it. There’s a extremely definite correlation in between drying temperatures of yellow cake and color.” It all depends on what chemicals you use although processing uranium. At Smith Ranch, we make uranium peroxide. It can be really clean and yellow. We complex uranium with hydrogen peroxide to make our product. You can make different types of yellowcake. You can make a uranium diuranate, a complex created with ammonia.” Yellowcake may be created with other chemicals.
How is Wyoming’s ISL uranium dried? “We dry the uranium with vacuum dryers,” said Drummond. “The benefit of vacuum dryers is initial of all, it’s a vacuum so everything is sucked inside the canister so nothing escapes into the environment. There are no gases that escape.”
Investigating the Environmental Issues
It was, at this point, we felt it appropriate to inquire about all the puzzling worries several of us might correlate when thinking about nuclear power and uranium. How safe is all of this actually? “When we first started uranium mining, we inherited individuals from the gold mines,” Drummond explained. “They have been underground, and smoking, breathing in the dust. In the early days, we didn’t have good ventilation. In underground mining, you’ve got to keep the air moving.” Hard rock underground mining produces dust. “The shards of silicone you might be breathing stick for the follicles on your lungs,” he noted. But that doesn’t happen throughout the ISL extraction process. No emissions, a farm of well fields with underground pipes and tubing, and extremely detailed safeguards explain they the lobby wall of Power Resources is lined with Safety Award certificates and plaques.
“On a daily basis, when we leave the facility, we are scanned for alpha radiation,” continued Drummond. “Depending upon your position here, you get urinalysis once per week or once per month. We also check for radiation levels.” How did Drummond fare on his most recent radiation check? “I was way below,” he laughed. “There are guys for the beach in Malibu that have higher radiations than I have.”
What precautions does Power Resources take to protect the environment throughout the ISL extraction process? “Since 1996, we have had zero excursions,” Drummond introduced with steeliness in his voice. “We take very great pains to look in the topography, so if we do have an excursion, we make sure it does not enter what we call the ‘waters with the state.’ Any channel that could take that and move it into the ‘waters of the state,’ is something that we are extremely cognizant of.”
After the holes are drilled into the well fields, a company does a ‘baseline sample.’ Drummond said, “That’s a sample from the constituents in the water. When we mobilize the uranium, we mobilize other items. It can be our duty here, following we commence the well field, to return the aquifer back to baseline when we are done.” He added, “If we know what’s within the water prior to we start, then we know how to restore it to background.” Restoration with the underground tampering with Mother Nature can take anywhere from 18 to 36 months.
The organization is meticulous in restoring the landscape as well. Any restoration work about the surface is called “reclamation.” That can involve farming. “When we begin a well field, we have to, by license, remove the topsoil and store it somewhere,” Drummond explained. “When we go back to reclaim the property, we take all the pipes out, we take the houses lower, and cut our wells off. It’s all identified. We put an ID marker on the well. In 50 several years time, when Farmer Joe comes around and wonders what was there, the state can say, ‘That was a uranium well.’ From the time we’ve stopped mining, we put everything back to normal.”
It takes from two to four months, or up to seven many years, to exhaust a well field, depending upon the roll fronts. While it can take up to 24 months to put inside a well field, reclamation and restoration take longer. “We put back the topsoil on, depending upon the weather, as soon as we can,” said Drummond. “We re-seed, throughout the spring or the fall, which is the finest time for seeds. The seed we use is dictated by the regulators so we use a certain amount of native vegetation.” Because it’s very dry in the Smith Ranch, nearly bordering on desert, and because it is also really windy, slapping down the topsoil won’t last extremely lengthy. “First, we plant some fast-growing oats to establish a root bed,” he explained. “If we just planted grasses, it would all blow away. Mainly because we plant the oats, we have fat antelope and fat deer.” From our observations, the sheep have been well-fed and frisky.
How does Wyoming ISL mining compare to other places, such as in Texas or in Kazakhstan? “In Wyoming, the water is pristine, really clean, even compared to Texas, where they do ISL,” answered Drummond. “The water’s pretty clean down there also.” May be the uranium the very same? “When we bring our uranium towards the surface, it comes up as uranyl dicarbonate,” he responded. “In Texas, it comes up as uranyl tricarbonate.” What’s the difference? It’s within the processing of the uranium. “We get about 8.5 pounds of pounds of uranium per cubic foot of resin,” he explained. “In Texas, they get about three to 4 pounds of uranium per cubic foot of resin.”
Drummond described the Smith Ranch ion exchange operation, “We have two columns in the ion exchange, every with about 500 cubic feet of resin.” The resin costs about $200/cubic foot and, barring mechanical damage, can last up to thirty many years, according to Drummond. The polymer beads – they look like tiny plastic ball bearings – capture the uranium during the processing phase. “In Kazakhstan, you get about two to three pounds of uranium per cubic foot of resin,” he continued. “They use hydrochloric acid mainly because from the water conditions. Obviously, you’ve altered the chemistry with the water and have all the acid to clean up.” Drummond described the water in Kazakhstan as really brackish, and yellowish. “The TDS (total dissolved solids) is very high,” he added. “The water’s not fit for human consumption anyways.” He laughed, “Using acid over there cleans their water up.”
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