India: 'Massive' uranium find in Andhra Pradesh

plugwater

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Any Idea what will be capacity of that reactor and how safe that will be? It will take years to mature design of safety features for high capacity reactors. I dont think any other coun try will be there to help us out. we need to do it on our own and hence there wont be any shortcuts.
We already announced plans for our first thorium reactor and we are the leader in Thorium research.

Some comparison.



 
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Iamanidiot

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LF, looking it from another angle, why break into sweat and worse damage the environment if we can source it from elsewhere even if we had to pay a slightly higher price. We can keep the mine secured for the future.
Much like how the US does with it's oil. The US actually has far more oil reserves than any other country. But it will not drill. Now they say it's because of environment. But actually it is waiting for the rest of the worlds oil to dry up before it starts to drill. Pretty far sighted policy. Need oil? $1000 a barrel. Take it or leave it!!
The Maoists,NGO's and tribals are incidentally playing the above sort of role you mentioned unknowingly Yusuf.This actually is a blessing in disguise
 

Rahul92

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I heard that Kerala has the largest reserves of thorium is it true
 

Rahul92

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I've even heard about hydrogen energy plants wat abt them
 

Armand2REP

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I wonder what the quality of the ore is. Current mines in India are low quality and the higher quality sites haven't even started mining. If this gets caught up in Red Tape it will stunt India's quest for energy independence. I think the best thing India can do for itself and the world is to get off coal and load up on reactors. This find is great for both India and the planet.
 

KS

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I heard that Kerala has the largest reserves of thorium is it true
Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The beach sands hold enormous amounts of Monazite which is the ore for Thorium.
 

Param

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I am sure we will finish our first thorium based reactor before starting to mine this Uranium.
But by then we would have built Many uranium based reactors. I mean by 2020 much of the work in the upcoming nuclear plants with French,US and Russian reactors would have been completed.
 
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I wonder what the quality of the ore is. Current mines in India are low quality and the higher quality sites haven't even started mining. If this gets caught up in Red Tape it will stunt India's quest for energy independence. I think the best thing India can do for itself and the world is to get off coal and load up on reactors. This find is great for both India and the planet.

Last few finds were very high quality

Uranium in icy Ladakh - Hindustan Times

Uranium in icy Ladakh


Scientists have for the first time found uranium in "exceptionally high concentration" in Ladakh, the icy Himalayan region in Jammu and Kashmir that has strategic significance for India. Samples of rocks analysed in a German laboratory have revealed uranium content to be as high as 5.36 per cent compared to around 0.1 per cent or less in ores present elsewhere in the country.

India badly needs uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants and the proposed India-US nuclear deal is all about importing it. The Ladakh find may cheer those opposed to the deal even though detailed exploration and mining may take years.

The Ladakh block lies between the Indian plate in the south and the Asian plate in the north and is bounded by the "Indus and the Shyok suture zones". Collision between the two plates 50-60 million years ago formed the Himalayas.

The earth's crust that got crushed and melted during collision and pierced the surface, cooled and solidified becoming "magmatic" rocks dotting what geologists call the Ladakh "batholith". It is in these rocks that uranium is found.

"The presently recorded uranium rich zircons from young magmatic intrusions of the Shyok suture zone and associated sequences is the first record from these remote regions," said Rajeev Upadhyay, a geologist at Kumaon University in Nainital.

"In geological terms, these uranium-bearing magmatic rocks exposed in Ladakh are very young (between 100 million and 25 million years old)," he said.

Other uranium rich rocks in India such as in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan are very old geological terrains known as the Precambrian (2,500-3,000 million years old), he said.

For his study, reported in the journal Current Science, Upadhyay took samples from thick exposed granite from a place north of Udmaru village in Leh district. The village in the Nubra-Shyok River Valley is situated on a volcanic rock formation known as the Shyok Volcanics.

The samples of rock mineral (zircon) were analysed at the isotope laboratory of the University of Tuebingen in Germany where he had gone under the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.

"Geochemical analysis of the separated zircon grains showed exceptionally high concentration of both uranium (0.31 - 5.36 per cent) and thorium (0.76 - 1.43 per cent)," said Upadhyay. He added that the study is preliminary and "detailed work is in progress". According to Upadhyay, uranium-bearing magmatic rocks are located all along Kohistan, Ladakh and southern Tibet (from east to west). "However, contents of uranium may differ from place to place," he said.

Officials of the atomic minerals division under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) did not reply to questions about the significance of this new find or whether the Ladakh uranium could augment India's reserves.

The total established uranium resources of the country so far (in the form of uranium oxide or yellow cake) are 94,000 tonnes. The majority of these resources, according to DAE, occur in three "provinces": Singhbhum in the east, Mahadek in the northeast and Cuddapah in the south.

The low uranium content in ores, however, makes mined uranium in India expensive compared to that in Australia whose ores contain as much as 15 per cent uranium.
 

pmaitra

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So my question is when are Mamata Banerjee, Medha Patkar et al., going to arrive here and start agitation?
 

Yusuf

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So my question is when are Mamata Banerjee, Medha Patkar et al., going to arrive here and start agitation?
I hope they do. It will serve us in the long run. I think we should still pursue uranium from other sources and keep ours safe below the earth.
 

Iamanidiot

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The mine is Jagans territory not so easy to open in the current environment
 

Yusuf

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You know what I would actually suggest a mining policy keeping in mind scarce and fast depleting resources, limit Indian mines to basic use in India. If cost of imported ores are not too high compared to our own, import first. Preserve our resources till everyone else's dries up. It should not be a "stated policy" but an unsaid.

We should rethink our export of coal and iron ore etc. We should not stop exploration, but keep it for future. In 30-40 years, this policy will pay very rich dividends. Not in terms of making a killing by selling ores in the international market but by having those ores and being able to use it for our own industries while others have none.
 

sanjay

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The best way is to get the 3-stage program working ASAP. Thorium is far safer than uranium anyway. They should even pay for using regular energy sources to power spallation sources that can breed the thorium. That will accelerate the breeding cycle.
 

ganesh177

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And you think that is enough to say good bye to Aus and Canada?
In 40(actually in 2 ) years australia will sure change there policy and start selling uranium to india, and also many other mines in india will be discovered by then. So no need to panic.
 
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This policy by Australia is pure hypocrisy they are supplying China a notorious proliferator and they are denying India with a perfect record. Anyway there are other non NPT/NSG members who can also supply uranium.
 
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Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine

The $14m haze over India's mega uranium discovery

The announcement of a major discovery of uranium deposits in the Cudappah region of Andhra Pradesh just before the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is important. It is meant to tell the US that India might not budge on the clauses on which the strategic nuclear deal is stuck.

The timing of the announcement is important because, say sources in the know, it may not be entirely accurate. India is nowhere near its target of producing 20,000 mw of electricity by 2020. And the US has a sense of this. Mining the metal at the Tummalapalli village belt in Cudappah would translate into electricity at a very high price as the quality of the newly-found ore is one of the poorest in the world. It promises a good yield only in terms of quantity.

AK Rai, Director of the southern region of the Atomic Minerals Division of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was not available for comments despite repeated attempts.

According to DAE data, the ore extracted from Jaduguda in Jharkhand is of 0.065 grade, while the one discovered at Cudappah is of 0.045 grade. This means an extractor would need to mine 1,000 kg of ore to get 65 gram of usable uranium at Jaduguda, while at Cudappah he would get only 45 gram.

Sources in DAE said the exploration in Cudappah was put on hold after an initial find close to 17,000 tonne in 1995-1996. It was restarted in 2007 around the time when the negotiations between the US and India were on. This was part of a larger goal to make a strong case for India and show it does not have to wholly depend on the US for its goal of achieving the 2020 target.


HIGH-GRADE ENERGY, LOW-GRADE SAFETY

The department has been under tremendous pressure since 2007 to establish uranium ore deposits in India. The success rate has been good since there have been substantial discoveries in Karnataka, Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh. But the problem is the poor quality, according to sources. Even quantity-wise they cannot help meet the 2020 target.

In India, an average of 10 tonne of uranium is required to produce one megawatt of electricity, after including the wastage during mining and extraction processes. Going by this assessment, DAE secretary Srikumar Banerjee's announcement that India's total estimated reserves stand at 1.75 lakh tonne means that the country is in a situation to produce only 17,500 mw of electricity even if it uses up all of these reserves.

The power produced by using the whole yield from Cudappah after the tardy process of mining would be just 4,900 mw, taking the total production to 9,700 mw over the next ten years, way short of the target.

And with the protests against the various nuclear plants in the country heating up, it is not even clear whether India would have enough reactors to consume the uranium extracted from Tummalapalli. For example, the two plants of 700 mw each at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan would only produce 1,400 mw by 2016. Construction of other plants, meanwhile, is at a nascent stage – some are still in the planning stages.

On top of that, the cost of mining uranium in India is extremely high compared to world standards. According to sources it is difficult to establish an accurate cost as the process is state-controlled. Whereas in western countries it is done by private companies.

The profitable cost standards are between $80 and $130 per pound across the world, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Red Book. Sources say India spends more than $130 per pound to mine uranium, which makes it a loss-making venture for the exchequer.

"For example, just the cost of mining and extraction of uranium from the 49,000 tonne that DAE claims to have discovered will be a minimum of $14.1 million," a source said.

There is scope for mining 16,000 tonne of comparatively good quality ore in Meghalaya. However, protests against the proposed Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) plants have put that into jeopardy. Protests have also erupted in Gulbarga, Karnataka, where exploration is on.
 
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Will the recent find of uranium reserves boost India's N-power plants? - The Economic Times

Will the recent find of uranium reserves boost India's N-power plants?


Early this week, theAtomic Energy Commission (AEC) announced that India had reserves ofuranium far in excess of what was known. Specifically, an ore inAndhra Pradesh was supposed to contain 49,000 tonnes of uranium, probably even 150,000 tonnes, instead of the 15,000 tonnes that AEC had so far assumed. It is good news in a world of rising uranium prices and shortages. It is also good news because India needs more and more uranium as it builds more and more nuclear reactors.


India has plans to raise its nuclear power generation capacity from the current 4,780 megawatts to 63,000 megawatts by 2032.

The precise value of this finding is, however, hard to assess. The AEC is tuning itsnuclear energy programme based on the resources we have instead of what we need. In other words, it is developing technology to utilise existing resources rather than finding resources to suit existing technology. As we approach the 2030s, Indian nuclear plants would use - the AEC hopes - more and more plutonium and less and less uranium. In any case, 49,000 tonnes of uranium (in the form of U3O8) will give us only 8,000 megawatts of power over 40 years. We need to import substantial quantities of uranium, but the precise amount of imports will depend upon how we develop breeder reactors that use thorium and plutonium instead of natural uranium.

Even so, this finding of new uranium deposits is not without its uses. It has raised hopes of finding more uranium deposits as the AEC explores more areas of the country. During the past four years, the Hyderabad-based Atomic Minerals Directorate (AMD) had been using advanced methods for uranium exploration. Till then, uranium exploration was based on surface expression, or by looking at a few metres from the surface of the earth. This method has its limitations; uranium deposits are often found deeper down, sometimes as deep as 500 metres.

In the past four years, AMD has been using advanced aerial surveying methods for prospecting uranium. Magnetic studies, time-domain electromagnetic surveys and aero-radiometry can spot mineralisation up to 500 metres. The precise nature of the mineral is then found out by drilling. AMD had surveyed 1,66,000 km using such methods in the past four years. It will explore another 4 lakh km over the next four years. So we may still have some surprises in store. The ore found in Andhra Pradesh is of poor quality, containing only 0.05% of uranium. Some other parts of the country like Meghalaya have deposits with 0.1% uranium. It is not inconceivable that we would find more such deposits in the future.
 

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