Cameco officially opened one of the largest uranium mines in the world on Wednesday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Cigar Lake mine.
The grand opening comes after years of delays including flooding that threatened the multi-million dollar project.
The high-grade uranium deposit was discovered in 1981 but when the project began in 2005 there were several setbacks including two floods that caused extensive delays.
President Tim Gitzel says the company didn’t know what they were dealing with when they started the project.
“We’ve really had to adapt and be innovative. We’ve invented a lot of new techniques we’re employing to run this mine now,” Gitzel said. “So just a real success story here in Saskatchewan.”
Mining of uranium ore began in March of 2014, with the first packaged uranium concentrate from Cigar Lake available in October of 2014.
Even though boring has been underway for more than a year and a half, significant commercial ore production didn’t begin until this May.
Once extracted, the uranium from Cigar Lake is taken to the McClean Lake mill – which is owned by AREVA Canada Resources Inc. – for production.
So far this year McClean Lake mill has processed and packaged 6.1 million pounds of uranium concentrate from ore mined at Cigar Lake, with a target to produce between 6 and 8 million pounds by year’s end.
Cameco hopes the mine will produce 18 million pounds per year of high-grade uranium by 2018.
The McLean Lake mill is currently undergoing expansion, which is slated to be done by 2016.