Not sure if many have seen this...

Not sure if many have seen this one...

http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2007/02/21/radiation-therapy


Radiation therapy
An Australian company wants to revive the Czech Republic's last uranium mine

By Paul Voosen
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 21st, 2007

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Workers in the Rožná mine, who are limited to 10 years inside, are more concerned about structural soundness than radiation.
ROŽNÁ URANIUM MINE, WEST MORAVIA
Gazing up at the primary shaft of this massive uranium mine, 800 meters (2,624 feet) beneath the surface of the Czech-Moravian Highlands, Pavel Zinkler, the mine’s manager and an employee of 25 years, is waiting for an elevator. After a few minutes stuck on the 16th level, he opens up.
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Rožná ore has a grade of 0.3 percent, 50 percent richer than some Australian deposits. This, and employment concerns, have kept it open.

It’s an old mine with old technology, he says, built in 1957 as part of the Cold War spike in atomic weapons and energy. The shaft is braced by creaking timber; if he could replace that with concrete, the mine would be safer. But it would also cost an estimated 100 million Kč ($4.6 million). It’s one of many improvements he’d like to make.
The shutdown of Rožná looms next year. Until this year, when Romania, which also has a uranium mine, joined the European Union, Rožná was the only such active mine in the club. Now, Zinkler says, the goal is to get as much out of the mine as possible. “It’s always exploit, exploit, exploit,” he says. “I wish we had more time for investment.”
František Toman, deputy manager of the mine's chemical plant, oversees ore conversion into yellow cake.
With rising worldwide concern and evidence for global warming caused by greenhouse gasses, and uranium prices up 400 percent over the past four years, resources such as Rožná are getting increasing attention these days.
In fact, Zinkler may even get his wish. An Australian mining company, Uran Limited, says it is interested in investing in Rožná as part of its ongoing effort to extend the lives of uranium mines in the former Eastern bloc. The Czech government, which owns Rožná, has been in talks with Uran for the past year, and the company submitted a formal investment bid Feb. 19.
Source: DIAMO
Glowing Numbers
Uran seems to be on the leading edge of a revival of sorts. Other European countries, notably Portugal and Finland, are also looking into opening their own mines.
Uran wants to upgrade Rožná’s infrastructure and allow for excavation beyond its lowest level, 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) down.
“The Czech Republic is historically the fifth-largest producer of uranium ever, but there’s no active exploration going on now,” says Kate Hobbs, managing director of Uran. “This mine, with the proper injection of capital, can continue to … produce uranium.”
The Industry and Trade Ministry, which controls the mine through the state company DIAMO, is considering the proposal.
“If the bid is advantageous [to the country], there is no reason why the government should not seriously consider it,” says Tomáš Bartovský, spokesman for the ministry.
Uran’s bid notwithstanding, DIAMO has plans to extend operations at Rožná until 2012, pending state approval, which DIAMO thinks likely. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek publicly backed such an extension Feb. 8.
According to Bartovský, mining cannot continue past 2010 without updates to the physical plant.
Mine lives
During communism, Czechoslovakia sent all of its milled uranium to the Soviet Union, even after the country opened domestic nuclear power plants. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Bohemia and Moravia pumped an average of some 2,700 metric tons (2,976 short tons) a year into Warsaw Pact countries.
Most of the country’s uranium mines closed in the early 1990s after the collapse of the market, when prices fell to $6.90 per pound. The mines were depleted and some had environmental issues, particularly in Stráž pod Ralskem, north Bohemia, which used sulfuric acid in mining.
“Rožná probably should have closed then, too,” says Bedřich Michálek, deputy director of the mine. Instead, it was neglected.
“Since that time, there hasn’t been anything invested here,” says Michálek. “Fifteen years and no new money.”
But, driven by local employment concerns and the richness of its deposits — Rožná’s ore has a grade of 0.3 percent, 50 percent richer than some large deposits in Australia, the world’s second-largest uranium producer after Canada — Rožná has stayed open and has dodged closings scheduled for 2001, 2003 and 2006.
At its height in the 1980s, the Rožná complex employed 3,000 people, says Zinkler, and it was all a bustle. Since then, the mine has seen its own half-life pass by, and it is now a den of dark corridors and rusting metal.
The complex still employs 400 people, including 120 miners who are allowed to work underground, at twice the country’s average monthly pay, or around 40,000 Kč, for about 10 years before their radiation doses are deemed too high. The miners are young, aged 21–35, says Zinkler. In the past few years, as prices soared to their current high of $75 per pound, Rožná’s chemical plant has produced some 400 metric tons a year of uranium concentrate, or yellow cake, refined from the mine’s ore.
The market spike has allowed the mine to turn a profit, despite the economic straightjacket it’s bound to by its sole customer, the Czech energy utility ČEZ.
The two companies signed a long-term contract before the rise in prices, and, while their contracted rate has risen, it is “substantially lower now than current market prices,” says Ladislav Kříž, spokesman for ČEZ.
Over the past two years, Rožná has supplied one-third of the uranium needed for ČEZ’s two nuclear plants at Dukovany and Temelín, with the rest supplied externally. ČEZ may be in for a bit of a sticker shock if Rožná is closed or partially privatized.
Atomic boom
Uran’s interest in Rožná comes as anticipated demand for uranium is pushing up prices worldwide.
For many years, newly mined uranium provided only about 60 percent of the world’s demand, and this gap was covered by secondary sources of fuel, especially decommissioned Soviet nuclear weapons, which have been powering U.S. plants for the past 15 years.
Russia has announced that after 2013 it is cutting off this supply, just as experts anticipate a surge in nuclear power, pushed largely by the burgeoning economies of India and China, the need to lower carbon emissions and the fading of catastrophes of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl from public consciousness.
Hobbs says the uranium price increase can be relied upon for the next 10 years, which is why her company is seeking to develop existing mines rather than exploiting new deposits.
“You’d be lucky to get a new deposit producing within five to seven years,” she says, and then who knows what changes technology will bring?
Former Eastern bloc countries have been slow to capitalize on renewed demand, despite their reserves of trained engineers and scientists. Uran, which until now was involved in uranium exploration but not production, saw this as an opportunity. In addition to the Czech Republic, the company is seeking to acquire mines in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
“The company is well-regarded,” says James Wilson, a resource analyst at DJ Carmichael in Perth, Australia. “Any move to acquire an active mine outside of Australia would be classified as a very strategic move.”
“It will be interesting to see how much ownership Uran will get of this mine … [and] how much they will have to pay for it,” Wilson says. “Four hundred tons of uranium production annually is worth $30 million. It’s very significant if they can get a share of that.”

Tailing off
Most of the rest of the country’s known uranium reserves have been depleted, but there is still a lode of 100,000 metric tons in north Bohemia. Michálek does not expect this deposit to be developed, since uranium prices cannot be accurately projected and there would be serious environmental concerns.
Extending operations at Rožná should not raise environmental hackles, Bartovský says, as the mine has already done its damage. When the mine is eventually closed, the government will spend 5.4 billion Kč on its reclamation, cleaning the chemical plant’s tailing ponds and razing the mine’s buildings to the ground.



Paul Voosen can be reached at [email protected]