The "Red Book", jointly prepared by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a recognised world reference source on the uranium industry. This publication collates and analyses key information drawn from the twenty editions of the Red Book published between 1965 and 2004, in order to set out a comprehensive review of developments in the world uranium industry from the birth of civilian nuclear energy through to the beginning of the 21st century. It summarises developments in the major uranium-producing countries and topics covered include: installed nuclear capacity, reactor-related uranium requirements, market price, exploration, resources, production, natural and enriched uranium inventories, thorium, mine start-up and closure histories, environmental aspects of uranium mining and processing.
'Canada's Deadly Secrets' chronicles the struggle over Saskatchewan's uranium mining, the front end of the global nuclear system. It digs into impacts on Aboriginal rights, environmental health and the effect of free trade, tracing Saskatchewan's pivotal role in nuclear proliferation and the spread of contamination and cancer.
Based on statements given to the Navajo Uranium Miner Oral History and Photography Project, this revealing book assesses the effects of uranium mining on the reservation beginning in the 1940s.
The first discovery of uranium in Saskatchewan was at Nicholson Bay, in a remote northern location on the shore of Lake Athabasca. Uranium was first noted at what became the Nicholson site in 1929 when uranium was only of interest as an indicator of radium potential. When uranium ores became of strategic national interest in about 1940, a cross-Canada search was launched to find uranium deposits. The first to be found and developed was in the Northwest Territories. The second arose from a return to exploration at the Nicholson site in the Beaverlodge area in 1944. The Nicholson mine was the first uranium mine to be developed in Saskatchewan and, in 1949 was the only active uranium mine in Canada outside of the Northwest Territories. By 1959 the Nicholson ore body had been essentially depleted, but the Nicholson mine had played its role in helping Canada become one of the largest uranium producers in the world. It produced about 12,800 tonnes of uranium ore, yielding about 50 tonnes of uranium (as U3O8), and an estimated 60- to 90 thousand m3 of waste rock. Following closure in 1960, the Nicholson site was abandoned with little remediation and no reclamation being done. Forty-five years would pass before the governments of Saskatchewan and Canada reached an agreement to fund the remediation (clean-up) of the Nicholson site, and contracted the management of the project to the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC). At the time of writing this book the clean-up was about to begin, with several years of clean-up activity anticipated, and then a period subsequent monitoring activity, before the site is expected to be released into a long-term management and monitoring program.
The, Uranium Seekers, saga began in 1976 when world-famous Hollywood, California photographer, Martin, was contracted to come to Utah and begin documenting, paying photographic tribute to, uranium miners, native Americans, and the Vanadium King uranium and vanadium mines on Temple Mountain, Emery County, Utah. The essence of the project was to pay tribute to the persons who traversed Zane Grey's and John Ford's great western expanse in search of uranium ore, one rock at a time, from before Madame Curies trips to the, then, present, and to remind the world's public that uranium was, and still is, used to kill, not humanity, rather cancer. I harbored the hope that by going back to the first uranium rocks the nuclear industry would re-evaluate the physical structure of nuclear reactors, one cubic yard at a time. Nuclear reactors, when built, witness Fukushima Daiichi, are still being created with too much haste. Like the uranium miners themselves, it's the hands of the humanity who cast the cement forms in which the reactors rest which determines safety. I also, rather naively, hoped when uranium's harmonous utilization was embraced its destructive military reality, throughout the world, would melt. Even with the support of the fine Beverly Hills, California literary agent, Clyde M. Vandeburg of Vandeburg-Linkletter Associates who represented Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and many others at the time, the national and international events at Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl put Uranium Seekers and Martins great photographs to bed for decades. However, recently I learned the Utah Historical Quarterly Unpublished Manuscripts from the Department of Community and Culture at the Utah State Archives had harbored some of the manuscript material for decades and the recent events at Fukushima Daiichi made uranium part of the international conversation once again, I decided to dust off Martin's work and snatches of the original material for Uranium Seekers.
Developments in Economic Geology, 16: Geochemical Prospecting for Thorium and Uranium Deposits focuses on the analysis of various geochemical methods applicable in the search for all types of thorium and uranium deposits. The publication first ponders on the general chemistry and geochemistry of thorium and uranium, deposits of thorium and uranium and their indicator elements, and geochemical prospecting for thorium and uranium. Discussions focus on radiation surveys, selection of areas, primary mineralization, supergene oxidation, and secondary enrichment of endogenic thorium and uranium deposits, and equilibrium in the natural radioactive series. The book then ponders on lithochemical, pedochemical, hydrochemical, and biogeochemical surveys of the geochemical prospecting for thorium and uranium. Topics include heavy and light mineral surveys of stream, river, pond, and lake sediments, detailed litochemical surveys utilizing primary halos, and case histories. The text takes a look at sampling procedures and analytical methods for estimating thorium and uranium and miscellaneous methods and atmochemical surveys on the geochemical prospecting for thorium and uranium, including isotopic methods, remote sensing and geothermal methods, and liquid inclusion and thermoluminescent methods. The book is a valuable source of data for researchers wanting to explore geochemical prospecting for thorium and uranium deposits.
This report contains the first International Atomic Energy Agency projection of uranium supply and demand to 2050 and provides an understanding of how some alternative uranium supply scenarios could evolve over the period. The analysis is based on the current knowledge of uranium resources and production facilities, and takes into account the premise that they can operate with minimal environmental impact and employ the best practices in planning, operations, decommissioning and closure.