Zubana As far as i know your assumptions about land use in the...

Zubana

As far as i know your assumptions about land use in the area is right. Water would come from multiple sources, including aquifers and the river. I suspect that we are talking about multiple aquifers where water is accessed from structures at different depths and geological conditions, and maybe of different quality.

In general in this type of deposit the majority of the U mineralisation is in the sandstone, but you would to think that with the deposit being saturated then some of the u will be dissolved in the water and thus already be of a higher concentration that the water in an aquifer say 2km from the deposit where there is no significant u mineralisation.

I agree that groundwater control with UBHM is an issue that BLR will need to do more on. Important to remember that the holes are cased from surface to the area being mined, and this will in a large part control the groundwater. I think also how long the holes are open before being backfilled will also be important.

There is one big difference in mining a sandstone deposit by UBHM vs ISR. A lot of people don't get the distinctions. In the BLR proposal you are mining via a number of desecrate silo's the U in a solid state (i.e. its not mobile) and taking it to surface and then extracting the minerals. With ISR you inject reagents into the ore body via one well to dissolve the u into solution and collect it via a recovery well.

My view is that UBHM is a lot closer to UG mining than ISR or ISL.

What i will concede is that BLR is going to need to demonstrate the UBHM impacts as part of its licence process and they are going to spent a whole lot on hydrology during their feasibility phase.