Products Uranium | ||
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Companies Cameco, Areva Resources Canada | ||
The Key Lake mine is a former uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada, and the site of the largest uranium mill in the world. It is five-hundred and seventy kilometres north of Saskatoon by air on the southern rim of the uranium-rich Athabasca Basin. Key Lake was initially developed to open-pit mine two nearby uranium ore deposits: the Gaertner deposit and the Deilmann deposit. Mining of this ore ceased in the late 1990s; the Key Lake mill now processes uranium ore from the McArthur River mine and from existing stockpiles on site. High-grade ore from McArthur river is blended with lower grade local rock before being passed through the mill. The mill has an annual production capacity of 18 million pounds of U3O8. In addition, ammonium sulfate fertilizer is produced as a byproduct from used reagents. The pits of the mined out local deposits are being used as mill tailings management facilities.
Contents
It deposits jointly remain one of the higher grade uranium deposits ever discovered, at an average grade of over 2% U3O8. Key Lake is the third largest uranium deposit in the Athabasca Basin and is surpassed only by McArthur River and Cigar Lake.
Much of the exploration and development work was carried out by Uranerz Exploration and Mining, a company linked with German utility operators. The ore body was discovered by tracing radioactive boulders in the overburden back to their source.
The nearest village by road is Pinehouse, 220 kilometres south of Key Lake.
Production
Together, between 1983 and 1997 the two Key lake deposits produced 4.08 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 2.32% U3O8 (for a total of 208 million pounds U3O8 produced). The mill currently produces 18.7 million pounds of yellowcake per year.
Ownership
The Key Lake operation is owned by Cameco Corporation (83%) and AREVA Resources Canada Inc (17%), formerly COGEMA Resources Inc. Cameco is the operator.
Wolf attack
On New Year's Eve 2004, a lone wolf attacked a male fifty-five-year-old uranium miner named Fred Desjarlais. Desjarlais was jogging back to Key Lake's Cameco campsite when he confronted the wolf. A busload of his colleagues spotted the incident from a shuttle bus and came to his aid by frightening the wolf away. It subsequently disappeared into the wilderness. Fred received stitches when his colleagues took him to a medical facility. A few hours later, an air ambulance airlifted him to Royal University Hospital where he began a series of rabies treatments as well as recovering from his incident.