I will be releasing a report on ISL very soon documenting my findings. The ISL process involves drilling a series of bores or wells, injecting and extracting the leaching solutions, processing the recovered uranium, disposing of waste products, and restoring the groundwater to it s original water quality after the completion of ISL mining. Since ISL is essentially a groundwater mining exercise, it is the restoration of groundwater quality which is the critical factor after a mine ceases operation. There are two main choices for the chemistry - acid or alkaline solutions. Restoration of the groundwater is thus quite difficult since both the heavy metals and the uranium and radionuclides need to be treated.
Restoration is arguably achievable.
For the costs of ISL, there is generally reduced labour requirements, lower chemical inputs, and since there is no excavation and movement of large quantities of ore, overall operating costs are lower compared to conventional mines. By investigating the operation of ISL mines across the globe that have used both acidic and alkaline solutions, it can be easily shown that the current proposals for Beverley and Honeymoon are among the world s worst practice and are highly likely to introduce significant problems for groundwater contamination. Different countries have had different requirements for environmental and groundwater protection, and thus have tended to prefer one type of chemistry over the other. I will outline my findings of ISL mining operations in the United States, the former Soviet Union, the Czech Republic, Germany and Bulgaria. The United States experimented with it s first ISL project in Wyoming from 1961 to 1963, operating from 1963 to 1969.