World-Class Uranium - Types of Uranium Deposits

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Exploration, Mining, Marketing, & Acquisitions

Date posted: 01/13/16

Uranium is one of the more common elements in the Earth crust, and is often said to be some 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. Uranium ore deposits are found globally, with the largest-known recoverable resources found in Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The metal is so abundant that it occurs naturally in small quantities almost everywhere, including soil, rivers, oceans and rocks. The challenge, however, is to find areas with concentrations adequate enough to form an economically viable deposit or, better yet, a a so-called world-class deposit. Uranium ore is mined in several ways, depending on the geological conditions, processes include open-pit mining, underground mining, in situ leaching and borehole mining. Once extracted from open-pit, uranium ore is crushed and rendered into a fine powder and then leached with either an acid or alkali. The leachate is subjected to one of several sequences of precipitation, solvent extraction and ion exchange. The resulting enriched mixture, called yellowcake, contains at least 75% uranium oxide. Yellowcake is then calcined to remove impurities from the milling process before refining and conversion. To date, the highest-grade uranium deposits have been found in the Canadian Athabasca Basin in Northern Saskatchewan. The largest uranium-producing mine in the world is Cameco McArthur River, an underground mine located in the Athabasca Basin. Uranium deposits are generally classified based on host rock, structural setting and deposit mineralogy. The most widely used classification scheme was developed by the IAEA with the objective of subdividing deposits into 15 categories arranged according to their approximate economic significance ... Read on.