Talk:Uranium ore

Expansion of deposit types

I am working on a revamping of this article to reflect the 14 deposit styles currently accepted by the IAEA. Turgan (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Go for it. If you have a draft you want to distribute for comments, feel free to post a link and I'll have a look, make comments, etc. Rolinator (talk) 15:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

It is slow going, but once I have something worth reading, I will definately pass it on. Turgan (talk) 16:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Major Expansion

I did a major expansion to this article. I decided to roll out what I have prepared so far. Several sections still require information, which I will be adding in the near future. Turgan ^Talk 07:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Lignite, Freital and Fly Ash

Hi, just wondering why fly ash and lignite was taken out of the lignite section. As far as I understand the fly ahs projects will use the remnants of the burning of uranium rich lignite. So there is just the step of burning between lignite and fly ash, doesn't affect the geology. Freital in germany, although a hard coal deposit, is classified as "lignite" according to the IAEA scheme by the Wismut. I think there is no principal difference between lignite and hard coal, only that hard coal mineralisation have seen some more P/T. Cheers,Geomartin (talk) 02:03, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I took fly ash and hard coal out of the lignite section, as lignite is low grade, poor quality coal. That deposit model specifically deals with uranium associated with lignite. Here are my reasons for moving them:

• Higher grade coal (hard coal) like bituminous coal and anthracite, will have higher concentrations of uranium due to the compaction and enrichment of the coal. I have not found a reference to what model they would fit best in, so my impression is that for the time being "other deposit types" is the best place for them.
• Fly ash is not a deposit type at all. It is a secondary source. This article is about Uranium Deposits, not potential uranium sources.

Without good references and "common practice" to place them with lignite, I feel this is the best choice at this time. Cheers, Turgan ^Talk 06:03, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I choosen a more genetic approach for my thinking about the subject. Of course I know the difference between lignite and hardcoal, however the reason how the uranium was accumulated is for lignite and hardcoal (at least in the case of Freital) the same. Your are right that the compactation contributed to the further enrichment in hard coal. Unfortunately my reference is just in German, but the mining company Wismut put it in the lignite category. Unfortunately there are only very few papers about the East German uranium deposits, before 1990 publication was impossible and after 1990 no one was interested in the geology and genesis of the deposits anymore. I know that fly ash is not a geological deposit, but its processed material from lignite deposits. As I understand the project of Sparton Resources in China right (see reference), they want to produce uranium directly in a plant next to the power station. I regard that as a by-product production like uranium at OD or the extraction of uranium from phosphate deposits.Cheers,Geomartin (talk) 06:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Geomartin, I don't think you are right when you say that fly ash uranium is an ore deposit by product. it is a byproduct of burning a rock - not produced, in a sense, as a secondary product of processing the rock in a plant to produce coal and uranium. For example, if you produced uranium in a coal washing plant, then yes, it is a byproduct. You add untreated ore (coal silicates + uranium), wash it (process it), dump the waste, and produce two products - lignite and uranium.

Burning coal and creating ash, is like the production of rhenium from smelting molybdenite; like producing indium from electorefining of zinc plates, etcetera - this occurs after the ore is beneficiated and delivered to the customer and is utilised. I can't see how this is a mining operation. For instance, some coal power stations in Australia are inverstigating capturing carbon dioxide for use in the beverage and food service industries. Are they coal ad carbonated water mines? Rolinator (talk) 07:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

While I can see your reasoning with regards to the coal deposits in Germany, we have to follow the policy fo "No Original Research" for wikipedia. This means we have to veryify facts from respectable institutions, books, and journals. Based on my experience in the mining industry, I would be hard pressed to include mining companies in this list, as they usually don't "publish" thier research, if they do any at all. I feel this means we have to follow the deposit descriptions as laid out by Dahlkamp and others. In effect, without reliable secondary sources for verification, we can't place them anywhere but "other deposit types". Turgan ^Talk 23:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that geomartin should be encouraged to find a link - even in german - and put it up for our perusal. If we don't accept private company information as verifiable information, then we can never quote the size, grade, tenor, recoverability, character or indeed the geology of ANY ore deposit save for a special few which get written up in journals. Turgan, facts are that a lot (99%) of information within the economic geology field is generated by non-University bound scientists working for companies. Are we to assume that only company information vetted by a bona-fide professor is acceptable? We hardly need have any economic geology articles at all! Firstly, company information generated by Publicly listed companies is a matter of legal and public record (especially if it goes for Ni-43 101 or JORC); the numbers used to describe deposit sizes in various economic geology papers are figures quoted under the auspices of these qualification schemes - certainly a university professor isn't going to do his own independent reserve number because if it varied from the company number in any way it would get everyone in unholy stink, and finally, company scientists who work to accepted norms and QA/QC can produce repeatable results (namely, when their "research" is proven during the reconciliation of mine performance vs estimated performance during the feasibility study process. Ergo, I think you have to accept non-scientific literature in many cases. Rolinator (talk) 07:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I see your point. Well made arguement, especially now that I have had more time to think about what I was thinking. I guess I have been jaded by looking through old data from companies that only release what they absolutely have to. 43-101 repoting has improved this a bit. Turgan ^Talk 13:01, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I should have also used the word "release" instead of "publish". Turgan ^Talk 13:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I don´t have a link regarding the Freital hard coal issue but could provide an excerpt of a document, of anyone wants to have a look on it. For the ash issue: I think it is important to set the deposit types into economic context. I think a reader wants to know if uranium can be extracted from a deposit or not. Direct mining of uranium from lignite deposits is uneconomic, and even at higher uranium prices I guess that will not change in the near future. But with the production from coal ash (which was already done in the US), uranium from lignite-uranium deposits will be extracted and finally made into nuclear fuel. With that, lignite uranium deposits will contribute to the nuclear fuel cycle in economic ways. The IAEA sees that the same way as stated in their document here (Page 65): [1] Cheers,Geomartin (talk) 00:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that if its a by-product like that its not an ore deposit. You can extract any number of heavy metals from fly ash - cadmium, lead, uranium, vanadium, PGE's, etc. Are we mining the rock itself for the uranium? Not in the case of fly ash. it is like claiming a coal deposit is a carbon dioxide deposit were we to use carbon capture and sequestration to extract CO2 from the flue gas and use it in soda water. Fly ash can be sintered into bricks and slags and used on roads as gravels - are we mining the coals to build roads, should we classify it as a gravel pit? No. In some cases, dust from city streets has 12 grams per tonne of PGE's from catalytic exhausts of cars. Do we now consider petrol a PGE ore? You see what I'm saying.

I think you have to consider that you can find a pretty good place for this on the uranium page itself. We really want to talk about the ore deposits. Ore is an economic concentration of a material within the Earth's crust. This isn't classically extended to mean the byproducts of that ore. For instance, most zinc mines produce a sphalerite concentrate which is rich in germanium, but we don't consider them germanium mines. The germanium - where the smelter recovers it at all - is produced as a byproduct, often with no economic benefit to the zinc miner itself. Ergo, zinc ore is not germanium ore in the vast majority of cases. Rolinator (talk) 13:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)