6.1.1 Central Asia’s uranium mines

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan has been an important source of uranium for more than fifty years. Uranium exploration started in 1948 and economic mineralisation was found in several parts of the country. This supported various mines in hard rock deposits. Some 50 uranium deposits are known, in six uranium provinces. In the early 1970s, successful tests on in situ leaching (ISL) led to further exploration being focused on two sedimentary basins with ISL potential. Up to 2000, twice as much uranium was mined from hard rock deposits as sedimentary ISL sands, but almost all production is now from ISL mines, some relatively small. Over 2001-2011 production rose from 2000 level to 19 450 tU/yr, making Kazakhstan the world’s leading uranium producer (36% of total in 2010), and further mine development is under way with a view to increasing production. All uranium is exported.

Kazatomprom is the national atomic company set up in 1997 and owned by the government. It controls all uranium exploration and mining as well as other nuclear-related activities. It aims to add value to the fuel chain and it is developing its fuel fabrication facilities so that fuel assemblies, rather than just fuel, could account for most sales by 2015. Kazatomprom has forged many international agreements on all aspects of nuclear power, and many of the mining operations are run as joint ventures with Russian, Chinese, Canadian and French companies.

All except one of the operating and planned ISL mines are in the central south of the country. Mines in the Stepnoye area have been operating since 1978, those in the Tsentralnoye area since 1982 — both in the Chu-Sarysu basin/ province, which has more than half the country’s known resources. There are 14 mines here. Mines in the Western (No. 6) area of the Syrdarya basin/province have operated since 1985, and today it has seven mines. One further ISL mine is in the Northern province.

Russia

AtomRedMetZoloto (ARMZ) is the state corporation which took over all uranium exploration and mining assets in 2007, as a subsidiary of Atomenergoprom, the state-owned Russian atomic energy company. It inherited 19 projects with a total uranium resource of about 400 000 tonnes.

Uranium production is increasing. In 2010 Russia produced some 3500 tonnes of uranium, mostly from several large underground mines operated by Priargunsky in the Streltsovskiy district of the Transbaikal or Chita region of south-east Siberia near the Chinese and Mongolian borders. These deposits were discovered in 1967 and have been the major source of production since.

A lesser amount of production is from new operations at Khiagda in Buryatiya about 500 km north-west of Priargunsky’s operations, and Dalur in the Kurgan region between Chelyabinsk and Omsk, just east of the Urals. Both are low-cost in situ leach (ISL) operations.

Most of the future production is set to come from the massive Elkon project with several mines in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) some 1200 km north-north-east of the Chita region. There is huge investment to bring these into production, which could ramp up from 2013 levels to 3000 tU in 2015, and 5000 tU/yr by 2024.

Uzbekistan

During the Soviet era, Uzbekistan provided much of the uranium for the Soviet military-industrial complex. Today the state-owned Navoi company operates several uranium mines, producing about 2400 tU/yr.