Reversing Mother Nature, Part Two

We talked to North Americas leading In Situ Leach (ISL) uranium mining engineers, and had them explain exactly how ISL worked. Most of the significant ISL operations in the United States were designed and/or constructed by these engineers. They explained how ISL mining is really just reversing the process of Mother Nature.

ISL EXTRACTION AND PROCESSING

During ISL mining, water is pumped to the surface from production wells that contain uranium in very low concentrations, on the order of parts per million concentrations. The next step in the ISL process is to extract the uranium dicarbonate. Extraction is done by chemically exchanging ions inside a processing facility. The ion exchange process is very analogous to a home Culligan water softener, Anthony revealed. It removes hardness or calcium from the water by replacing it with sodium, using ion exchange resins. If you go to Lowes or Home Depot, and buy a water softener, you basically have a home version of a uranium extraction plant. The main difference is your water softener will have a cation exchanger. For a uranium plant to function properly, you need to use an anion exchange resin, which is specifically...