Uranium Mining - Amur Oblast, List of Uranium Mines, Krugersdorp, Uranium Mining Debate, Uranium Corporation of India (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 74. Chapters: Amur Oblast, List of uranium mines, Krugersdorp, Uranium mining debate, Uranium Corporation of India, Botanical prospecting for uranium, Uranium by country, List of countries by uranium reserves, Transbaikal, List of countries by uranium production, Canada's Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System, Paddy Martinez, Bateman Pulsed Column. Excerpt: Uranium mining is the process of extraction of uranium ore from the ground. As uranium ore is mostly present at relatively low concentrations, most uranium mining is very volume-intensive, and thus tends to be undertaken as open-pit mining. It is also undertaken in only a small number of countries of the world, partly because sufficiently high uranium concentrations to motivate mining at current prices are rare. The worldwide production of uranium in 2009 amounted to 50,572 tonnes, of which 27% was mined in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia are the top three producers and together account for 63% of world uranium production. Other important uranium producing countries in excess of 1000 tonnes per year are Namibia, Russia, Niger, Uzbekistan, and the United States. A prominent use of uranium from mining is as fuel for nuclear power plants. As of 2008, known uranium ore resources that can be mined at about current costs are estimated to be sufficient to produce fuel for about a century, based on current consumption rates. After mining uranium ores, they are normally processed by grinding the ore materials to a uniform particle size and then treating the ore to extract the uranium by chemical leaching. The milling process commonly yields dry powder-form material consisting of natural uranium, "yellowcake," which is sold on the uranium market as U3O8. Uranium minerals were noticed by miners for a long time prior to the discovery of uranium in...