Uranium symposium covers state of the art (Part 3)

Another presentation at the U2009 uranium symposium held in May in Keystone, Colorado, was given by Jan Slezak of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who reported about a new training and education initiative, intended to promote good practices in uranium production.

The Agency plans to establish a training and education program focusing on the uranium production cycle. It is envisaged that the program will be delivered by a network of international training and education centres which the IAEA plans to set up together with third-party partners.

The IAEA publishes tens of technical reports on various aspects or uranium deposits, intended to help in the exploration, mining and extraction of the metal, as well as safety and environmental aspects of the uranium production cycle. The Agency holds a number of conferences every year to promote technology transfer, and has established 17 projects to facilitate technical cooperation in uranium production.

Another new project that the Agency intends pursuing is the optimization of in-situ leach (ISL) technology.

Blind deposits

Another paper was presented by Dale Sutherland of Activation Laboratories, who described a novel method for exploring for blind uranium deposits by detecting soil hydrocarbons.

While explorers have long used the presence of radioactive radon gas as an indication that a blind uranium deposit could lie underneath, detection using hydrocarbons is a new technique. It involves collection of near-surface samples, which are analyzed for a group of organic compounds.

The technique is used to identify both the nature of the buried mineral (for example uranium, gold, copper etc.) and its location. The organic compounds that it detects are produced by bacteria. Since different bacteria grow on different minerals, an analysis of soil hydrocarbons can give an indication of the subsoil minerals. So far the technique has been used to explore for gold, kimberlite, uranium, and nickel-copper.