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Namibia's uranium sector booms Posted: Fri, 02 Jan 2009 [miningmx.com] -- NAMIBIA'S uranium production hit record levels in 2008 and should do so again this year while the country’s third uranium producer could come on stream in 2010 if all goes to plan. That will be Valencia Uranium owned by TSX-listed Forsys Metals. Valencia is located some 45 kms from the long-established Rossing Uranium mine near Swakopmund which has been in operation since 1976. As of mid-December, Rossing Uranium was on track to produced 4,004t of uranium oxide (U3O8) for 2008 making this the first year it has reached this level of output since 1990. In November, ASX and TSX-listed Paladin Energy (Paladin) announced that its Langer Heinrich mine – also situated close to Rossing – had produced 650,555 pounds (lbs) of U3O8 during the September quarter. That meant Langer Heinrich had hit its designed “nameplate” annual production capacity of 2.6 million lbs (m lbs) of U308 for the first stage of the mine’s development. Paladin is about to commission the second stage at Langer Heinrich which will boost production to 3.7m lbs annually. Paladin MD John Borshoff estimated at end-November that Langer Heinrich should produce about 3m lbs of U308 for Paladin’s current financial year to end-June. Still being evaluated is the stage three expansion of Langer Heinrich which is “dependent on design and costing and on some water agreements with the Namibian government.” According to Borshoff, “if this issue is settled within our expected timeframe we expect to increase production to 6m lbs/year in late 2010.” The proposed Valencia mine is still at the feasibility stage. A technical report produced by Snowden Mining in June 2007 looked at construction of an open pit mine which would produce around 3m lbs of U3O8 annually starting production from 2010. A mining licence for Valencia was granted by the Namibian government in August. Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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