UEX Corp T.UEX

Cigar Lake tunnel walls not properly reinforc

[Quimby]

Cameco internal reports By Murray Lyons, SP Business Editor, The StarPhoenix Published: Friday, May 04, 2007 Cameco Corporation released two internal reports Friday which, among other things, report the uranium mining company was consistently unable to get its mining contractor at the Cigar Lake mine to reinforce new tunnel walls within an agreed upon 72-hour time frame. Work on a development tunnel which flooded and led to the mine being abandoned on Oct. 22, 2006 was way behind the required time frame, the report indicates. Only 25 per cent of the reinforcement bolts had been installed in the tunnel 102 hours after the blasting occurred. The blasting had also created a tunnel area with a much greater roof span than had been specified in the mine engineering plan, the report concludes. The attempts to stop the inflow of water from unanticipated geological structures that were breached by the tunnel blasting was also more hair-raising than previously reported. The attempts to repair a gasket on huge bulkhead doors that had deteriorated led to some scary episodes for underground miners in the hours before the mine was finally abandoned. A worker on a skid steer loader, trying to close a 10,000 pound door with a leaky gasket, had water flowing up to his chest before the decision was made to abandon the mine. A decision was made that morning to hoist the 24 miners picked up at the 480-metre level and the 420-metre level in one pass even though the number of workers exceeded the cages occupancy limit, and there was a heavy skip full of water slung below the cage. The 21 miners at the lower level had to use a ladder to reach the cage because the cage had to be stopped above the usual place because already water was three to four feet high at the cage level doors. A separate internal report on the flooding of a second vertical shaft earlier in 2006 stated Cameco had not identified a major water bearing feature before water began flowing into that shaft in April 2006. Cameco president and CEO Jerry Grandey scheduled a conference call Friday afternoon to respond to the document. Although the document was done by Cameco, the company had to hire an external company to do a root cause analysis, in a manner acceptable to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The commission will respond to the Cameco root cause report in early June and commissioners will question Cameco officials directly later in the month.