Comment by defrost
12 days ago
By international standards, China's ores are low-grade and production has been inefficient, due in part to the remote, mountain location of deposits. In 2022 uranium production was an estimated 1700 tU.
As noted in peer comment uranium is energy dense and relatively little is required.
Also, by global known deposit standards the ore density and ease of mining in parts of Canada, Africa, Australia, Kazakhstan (!!! 43 percent of global uranium production in 2022) dwarf those in most other parts of the world.
For interest, re: Uranium in China, the initial quote here comes from
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
It’s worth noting that Uranium mining uses the same nasty liquid-liquid extraction process used for rare earth metals. That’s why the mountainous locations in China suck - they have to move a lot of rock. A few countries dominate the industry because the vast majority of the world wants nothing to do with the environmental consequences of the toxic corrosive waste.
If push came to shove, many more countries would be able to spin up Uranium mining to replace any sources that fall victim to geopolitics. Since it doesn’t go bad, a relatively small stockpile goes a long way while the industry adjusts.
Uranium is mined by in-situ leaching. You don't have to move any rock (well a little, but astronomically less than for traditional mining). It's not at all similar to rare-earth mining.
That's one of many methods to mine uranium, used when the grades are low and the returns so poor that vast amounts of rock would have to be physically moved to return a kilogram of target ore. It works in particular geologic formations.
Large numbers of in-situ uranium wells were established in the US during the cold war at great expense to ensure some domestic supply, none the less the overwhelming majority of WWII and cold war uranium for weapons was sourced from outside the US and today the bulk of uranium for power is sourced outside the US.
The largest uranium mines in the world do not use in situ leaching, Olympic dam (the largest known single deposit) uses underground mining, specifically sublevel open stoping, to extract uranium, gold, copper, and silver.
Cameco's McArthur River mine is, IIRC, the largest producer (most currently extracted yearly, although not largest deposit) and also, not suprisingly, not an in-situ leach mine, it's underground tunnels with level to level rock grinding bores that drop rock to automated trucks, ground and slurried and then pumped to the surface for further processing some 80 km away at another plant. ( See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_cYEBotDBo )
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