U.S. uranium mining company Uranium Energy Corporation (UEC) recently announced its plan to accelerate the steps required for a resumption of operations. This will enable a faster restart at the Christensen Ranch in-situ leaching (ISL) project in Wyoming.
UEC acquired the Uranium One Americans (U1A) project from Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom in December of 2021. U1A’s assets included production-ready the Christensen Ranch ISL project and associated orebodies. When combined with the Irigaray central processing plant (CPP), this group of assets forms the Willow Creek uranium mine. They have been under care and maintenance since 2018.
UEC said, "The repatriation of the assets to US ownership has been a transformative acquisition for UEC, positioning the company as the largest, fully permitted, low-cost ISL project resource base of any US-based producer.” Since the UEC acquisition of the U1A assets, "key production infrastructure, including its wellfields and the satellite ion exchange plant, have been maintained, and now upgraded and refurbished to facilitate a fast restart. Uranium recovered from Christensen Ranch will be processed at UEC's Irigaray CPP.”
The Irigarauy CPP is the anchor of the UEC’s Wyoming hub-and-spoke project. The plant was originally constructed by Westinghouse and was later expanded by U1A in 2010. The expansion added two resin elution circuits and additional precipitation capacity. The Irigaray CPP is one of the biggest uranium CPPs in the U.S. It is licensed for two and a half million pounds of uranium production per year. There are pending plans to increase the licensed capacity to four million pounds per year.
The first project that will feed the Irigaray CPO will be the Christensen Ranch project. UEC has been working at Christensen Ranch since the beginning of this year. They are moving out of care and maintenance and advancing towards resuming production. UEC has already conducted a series of operational tests in the mine units of the project.
UEC also announced the installation of a new wellfield at the Christensen Ranch. The drilling and well installation program for one hundred and eighty recovery and injection wells is planned to start in August of 2023. The company noted that “Although not required for initial startup, these new wellfield modules will be installed and available for ramp up to meet production requirements.”
Amir Adnani is the UEC President and CEO of UEC. He said, “With demand increasing for uranium supply from stable geopolitical jurisdictions and US national security objectives, we foresee an increasingly urgent need for domestic uranium supply. The fundamental drivers of supply and demand, including pending legislation to ban Russian uranium imports to the United States, are translating into rising uranium prices that have accelerated UEC's production readiness program. In that regard, we have been working towards restarting production to fulfill the need for domestic uranium.”
In April of 2022, UEC disclosed mineral resources totaling sixty-nine million pounds of U308 in the first technical filing for its Wyoming hub-and-spoke uranium ISL project. The elements of the project consist of the Irigaray, Christensen Ranch, Moore Ranch, Reno Creek, Ludeman, Allemand-Ross, Barge and the Jab/West Jab project areas. The total measured and indicated resources across all the assets total almost sixty-two million pounds of U308. Total inferred resources are over seven million pounds of U308.