Cigar Lake gets the go-ahead The Leader-Post (Regina), Tue 21 Dec 2004 Murray Lyons
SASKATOON -- Saskatchewan's next big uranium mine has received the green light from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), potentially creating hundreds of construction jobs and hundreds more mine jobs by 2007.
The commission announced Monday it has issued a licence to allow construction of the main underground mining works and surface support facilities at Cigar Lake, 600 kilometres north of Saskatoon. A decision on the timing of construction, creating hundreds of jobs as early as next year, now awaits a meeting of the Cigar Lake joint venture partners, led by Cameco Corp. Cameco has slightly more than 50-per-cent ownership of the project which is considered the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the world.
The Cigar Lake deposit has ore grades that average 16 per cent uranium and could produce 18 million pounds of uranium annually. The high-grade deposits could last 15 years with lower grade deposits being mined for a quarter-century after that.
Should the joint venture meeting this week put the final stamp of approval on the project as expected, it will trigger between $350 million and $400 million worth of construction that could see Cigar Lake producing uranium for world markets by 2007, 25 years after the deposit was first discovered.
Cameco spokesperson Lyle Krahn says an announcement on the project's timetable could be made as early as mid-week after Cameco finishes discussion with AREVA Group (Saskatoon-based Cogema Resources Inc.) which owns 37 per cent of Cigar, and two Japanese-owned companies that own eight and five per cent of the deposit respectively.
Both Cameco president Jerry Grandey and Cogema vice-president Vincent Martin have indicated world markets will require additional primary production from Saskatchewan mines to meet the needs of nuclear power plants by the end of the decade.
Wow, sounds like a pretty big deposit. Hopefully this will pump serious money into the Canadian economy.
After watching an interesting program on PBS about the geology of mineral deposits and their formation (I don't know the title because I began watching about 1/3 of the way into it!) it occurs to me that with evidence for water on Mars mounting--one wonders if ancient hydrothermal deposits of uranium ore will be found on Mars. Chances are excellent that the minerals are there--one look at Olympus Mons gives an indication of the sheer volume of volcanism in Mars' past. A Uranium/Thorium breeder/fuel economy may be in Mars' future....
