WANG and 5 co-authors reported in early 2017 that over the past three decades, with the success in in-situ leach (ISL) mining of sandstone-type uranium deposits(SUD), the quantity, resources and production of SUD increased in China and the world, and it has leapt to first in all types of uranium deposits.
The above graphic is a statistical presentation of global sandstone-type uranium deposits coexisting with oil, gas and coal in basins Left: the number of uranium-bearing bains and proportion; Right: the number of sandstone-type uranium deposits and proportion
Based on the statistics for the latest database of IAEA,1520 uranium deposits have been found worldwide, and 887 uranium deposits are sedimentary-type uranium deposits, accounting for 58% of the total number of uranium deposits; SUD have the largest number of 639, accounting for 71% of the sedimentary-type uranium deposits, accounting for 42% of the total number of uranium deposits in the world. The world has identified uranium resources (RAR+IR, <$130/kgU) 532.72×104 tU by 2011, of which sedimentary-type uranium depositsaccounts for 44%, and sandstone-type uranium accountsfor 32%. The two percentage will be 65% and 49% if not including Canada and Australia due to their monopolistic character.
The amount of global uranium production increased by 64% from 2003 to 2013, 86% of which is from ISLmining. The amount of ISL production has leapt to first since 2009, and the production from SUD accountsfor about 56% of global total production in 2012. More than 350 uranium deposits and 272,500 tU resources in China have been identified(OECD-NEA/IAEA, 2016)，Sandstone-type uranium deposit accounts for 43% of the resources and has become China's most important resources and resource potential in all types of uraniumdeposits. As can be seen from the above, most of the global uranium resources occur in sedimentary basins
Oil, gas, coal and uranium are the world's most important and non-renewable energy minerals. Oil, gas,and coal are almost entirely occurrence in sedimentary basins. It can be thought that oil, gas, coal and uranium mainly occurr in sedimentary basins. Globally, the coexistence of these four resources show a universal and divisional feature (Liu et al., 2005, 2007).
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