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McClean Lake mccleanlake.infomine.com (A MineSite Feature by InfoMine) Contact Information Cogema Head Office 817 - 45th Street West Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] Time: CST (Regina) Mine Manager: Jim Corman Mine Supt.: Bill Dodds Chief Engineer: Mike Eade Mine Geologist: Steve Wilson Overview | Location | Property | Operation | Process | Environment and Community Summary Report (printer friendly) Overview - Keywords Canada Uranium open pit McClean Lake is an open pit uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. The property consists of two mineral leases covering an area of 980 ha and nine mineral claims covering an area of 3,148 ha. McClean Lake has the newest, most technologically advanced uranium mill in the world. It is currently licensed until 2009 to produce 8 million pounds of U3O8 per year. The first uranium deposits were found in 1979. The mine had a capital cost of over $426 million and has been operating since 1999. McClean Lake has the newest, most technologically advanced uranium mill . . . At the JEB and Sue C deposits, over 41 million pounds of ore has mined and stockpiled, which will feed the mill until into 2006. Mining recommenced in 2005 with the Sue A deposit, which will be completely mined in the year, followed by Sue E. The remaining known deposits, including McClean North and Caribou, are expected to be mined over the next three years. The JEB pit has been converted into the tailings management facility. The JEB mill was commissioned in 1999. The mill is licensed to produce 8.0 million lbs. of uranium concentrate per year. The facility includes a sulphuric acid plant, warehouses, shops, offices and living accommodations for site personnel and other related infrastructure. It is currently operating at a rate of 6 million lbs per year of U3O8 to fulfil existing contracts and optimize stockpile throughput. As of 2006, the JEB mill is being expanded to operate at a rate of up to 12 million pounds of U3O8 per year, in order to process ore from Cigar Lake. Ownership Summary Name: Cogema Resources Inc. Interest: 70% Note: other Name: Denison Mines Inc. Interest: 22.5% Note: public Name: OURD (Canada) Co. Ltd. Interest: 7.5% Note: other -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference: 28 Oct 2005 McClean's workforce is about 280 Cogema employees and 50 long-term contractors, altogether more than half of them northerners. Workers are flown in from their home communities on a 7 day in - 7 day out schedule. McClean Lake is a joint venture of Cogema, Denison Mines and Ourd (Canada). The mine is operated by Cogema. Top Location - The McClean Lake mine is in northern Saskatchewan, 700 kilometres north of Saskatoon. Highway 11 goes to Prince Albert, then Highway 2 to La Ronge. North of La Ronge, the population is getting very sparce and Highway 102 deteriorates. This area, on the east side of the Athabasca Basin, has small, remote communities, with about 4,000 residents, most of them Aboriginal. Eighty km to the north, the road joins Route 905, a bumpy 300 km haul road that leads to the uranium mines in the area of Wollaston Lake. Northern Saskatchewan is a land of lakes (about 100,000 of them) and low-lying land scraped by glaciation. Drainage from the region moves both into Hudson's Bay to the northeast and the Arctic Ocean to the northwest. Soil is thin with jack-pine forests. Low lying areas contain muskeg, peat bogs, and black spruce. Clean water and land has provided the home for a wide range of northern fish and animals that were the sustaining social and economic foundation for aboriginal peoples of the area. Location Summary Nearest Landmark: MCCLEAN LAKE Distance from Landmark: 3km Direction from Landmark: ENE Latitude: 58 deg 15 min N Longitude: 103 deg 53 min W Satellite Image: This far north the sun hardly sets in June and July. In late winter and early spring the northern lights (aurora borealis) are often visible. Winters are long, cold, sunny, and dry. Summers are short and warm. Temperatures can range from +30°C in summer to -30°C in winter, with the wind chill making it even colder. Normal annual temperatures range from +17°C to -15°C. As with the other mines in the Athabasca Basin, McClean Lake is a fly in / fly out operation. Of the 265 people employed at the mine, more than half are residents of northern Saskatchewan, flying in for a seven day shift, then flying out to go home. Top Property - The uranium deposits at McClean Lake lie near the eastern margin of the Athabasca basin in the Churchill Structural Province of the Canadian Shield. The bedrock geology of the area consists of Precambrian gneisses unconformably overlain by flat lying unmetamorphosed sandstones and conglomerates of the Athabasca Group. The Precambrian basement complex consists of an overlying Aphebian-aged supracrustal metasedimentary unit infolded into the older Archean gneisses. The younger Helikian- aged Athabasca sandstone was deposited onto this basement complex. The basement surface is marked by a paleoweathered zone with lateritic characteristics referred to as regolith. There are a number of uraniferous zones on the property. Depths of the unconformity are shallow, rarely exceeding 175 metres, making open pit mining feasible. Did you know . . . that on Earth, uranium is 10,000 times rarer than iron, but 1,000 times more abundant than gold? (Areva) McClean Lake includes the Sue A, B, C and E, the McClean North, the JEB deposits, and other prospects. Two of these deposits, JEB and Sue C, have been mined out. The JEB pit has been converted into the JEB tailings management facility and will receive tailings from Midwest, Cigar Lake, and McClean Lake ores. Special low-grade uranium-bearing waste from the Sue C deposit has been deposited in the mined-out Sue C pit. Deposit Summary Deposit Type: Uraniferous Unconformity Primary Commodity: Uranium The diamond drill programme was completed in 2005. A new zone of structural disruption at the unconformity was discovered in the Bena Lake area, west of the Sue E pit. In 2006 work will focus on evaluating this trend at much tighter drill spacings. In addition, drill testing of sandstone hosted open pit targets will target the conductor stratigraphy immediately east of the JEB deposit, and basement hosted targets in the McClean North/South area.Reserves Summary Name: McClean Lake Commodity: Uranium -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Proven + Probable Tonnage: 41.4 Mlbs Grade: 1.6 % Note: In-situ and stockpiled -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference: December 31, 2004 In addition to the planned 5,500 metre drill programme, preparatory geophysics in the form of resistivity will cover the McClean North/South and Bena trends to prepare further targets for 2007 drill testing. Top Operation - Open pit mining at McClean Lake restarted in 2005, at the Sue A and Sue E deposits. Uranium ore from the Sue open pit mines is transported by 100 ton trucks to be stockpiled at the JEB mill. Sixty new employees were hired when mining restarted. All of the low-grade special waste that was recovered while mining the JEB and Sue C pits is being disposed of in the mined out Sue C pit. Work continued on evaluating the preferred mining methods and the desired sequence for exploiting the Midwest, Sue A, B and E and the McClean underground deposits to provide feed to the mill after the current stockpiles are depleted in 2006. Mine Production Summary Mine - McClean Lake Capacity: Unknown Rate: 1.045 Mt/year -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference: December 31, 2005 McClean north was the site of a pilot project in 2005. The test program evaluated two mining technologies: blind shaft mining (also called blind boring) and hydraulic borehole mining (also known as jet boring). The program tested modified drilling and ore recovery techniques deployed from the surface. Equipment will be used to mine a series of small, deep deposits called pods. Blindshaft boring methods will be used in the spring of 2006 to provide high grade feed to the JEB mill. This experimental mining method may offer advantages for both the environment and worker health and safety over conventional methods. Top Process - The JEB mill was commissioned in 1997 at a cost of $250 million. The mill intially had a production rate of 6 million pounds per year which will be expanded to 12 million pounds in 2007. The mill is expected to run for 40 years. It is designed for health, safety and environmental protection for the short and long term. The plant buildings have been grouped by industrial risks, to reduce exposure, with shielding, containment, ventilation and innovative work procedures to protect the workers. Uranium ore is transported by 100 ton trucks to be stockpiled at the JEB mill. The ore mixed with water is ground to a fine sand, and the mixture or slurry is pumped to the leach tanks. In the leaching process, sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide are added to the slurry to dissolve the uranium from the ore. Waste solids are separated from the product solution in the countercurrent decantation (CCD) process. Solids are neutralized and pumped to the tailings facility. Processing Summary Facility - McClean Lake Capacity: 12.0 Mlbs/y Rate: 177,000 t/y Note: Capacity is licenced. Product Commodity: Uranium Quantity: 5.49 Mlbs Cost: 5.64 Can$/lb Note: Cash cost represents total milling cost for U3O8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference: December 31, 2005 The solution containing uranium is put through sand filters for clarification. Clarified solution is processed in the solvent extraction (SX) circuit for purification and concentration. An organic solution is used to extract the uranium. Ammonium sulphate then strips the uranium from the organic solution, which is recycled through the SX circuit. Ammonia gas precipitates the uranium out of the purified product solution. Excess moisture is removed in the dryer (calciner). The remaining uranium concentrate or yellowcake, which is about 99% UO3 or 84% uranium, is shipped in barrels to a refinery. Cigar Lake will process its ore at the JEB mill. Haul trucks will have the same specially designed containers that are being used to haul slurry between McArther River and the Key Lake mill. The current plan calls for all Cigar Lake production to be leached at the JEB mill and the pregnant aqueous solution to be divided between McClean Lake and Rabbit Lake facilities for processing into uranium concentrates. Cigar Lake is currently scheduled to begin operations in 2007 and ultimately reach a capacity of 18 million pounds per year. The JEB tailings facility, tailings are deposited under water in a paste form from a barge. This procedure minimizes tailings segregation, eliminates concerns of freezing and dust generation, and controls radiation and radon emissions from the pond. This facility has been designed to receive tailings from the processing of the high-grade ores from Midwest and Cigar Lake in addition to tailings from McClean Lake. After decommissioning, the pit will be backfilled with waste rock, capped with till, re-vegetated, and monitored for long term isolation and containment. Top Environment and Community - Northern residents monitor the environmental impact of McClean Lake and other operations through the Athabasca Working Group's Community Environmental Monitoring Program. The program trains and equips community members to collect samples from the air, water, lake sediment, plants and animals in the vicinity of their communities. Three years of monitoring show no environmental effects from uranium mining. Traditional land use in the Athabasca region is hunting, fishing and trapping. Mining at McClean Lake temporarily curtails this and compensation agreements have been signed with trappers. Within the broader Athabasca region, the Impact Management Agreement between the Athabasca communities and First Nations, Cogema, and Cameco, includes an environmental protection and compensation agreement. The companies agreed to take all reasonably required measures to protect the environment. If uranium project emissions damage natural resources, the companies will clean up the damage and compensate individuals or communities that have suffered a loss. Once mining ends, the area will be reclaimed to blend with the surrounding countryside. McClean Lake received ISO 14001 certification in 2000.