RE:RE:Before anyone gets too giddyI might not be easy to restart a mine, but it's a lot easier, cheaper and quicker than building a new one.
Malcolm2001 wrote: Not very accurate BS. The term they use is "care and Maintenance" and the reason they use that particular term is that the mine has to be put into a safe state so that it does not become damaged. However (and I do recall saying this a while back) starting up a mine again is nowhere near as simple as flicking on a light switch which is what you make it sound like. It will take months to start up Langer Heinrich and many more months before yellowcake comes out of the other end. Also it will take a BIG improvement in Uranium prices. PDN is NOT going to restart L-H at a few bucks a pound more. It will take prices of at least 30 to 40 a pound to make it worth their while. To say that so glibly indicates to me that you have never been near a Uranium mine and have no comprehension of the effort needed to place a mine into care and maintenance and then restart it. Not a simple task by any means. Let us also not forget that most of the employees that operate the mine will leave once it is shutdown and they will go away and look for other jobs. Just getting all those skilled workers back to the site is a major undertaking itself. And if they have to train new workers that introduces even more delay. The same goes for McArthur River which is why you have heard Mr.Gitzel repeatedly say that those decisions are not taken lightly. It is nowhere near as simple as you think to restart a Uranium mine....quite difficult in fact. The more significant shutdown is the processing mills at L-H and McArthur. CCO has shutdown its Key Lake Mill so no yellowcake is coming out of there from McArthur River or anywhere else. These Mill shutdowns to me are far more significant than the mine itself. The highly skilled workers that operated them are very hard to find and they all have families to feed to will not be rushing back just because PDN or CCO decides it wants to produce Uranium again. Your argument is simplistic and does not highlight the difficulties of the timescale of restarting mills and mines.