Environmental authorization for the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) at First Uranium's Mine Waste Solutions (MWS) tailings recovery project in South Africa has "unexpectedly" been withdrawn. Meanwhile, Uranium Energy has now received all the necessary permits needed to proceed with development of its Palangana project in Texas.
First Uranium's MWS project is building a $260 million plant at the Buffelsfontein gold mine, which has estimated reserves of some 25,000 tonnes of uranium in old mine tailings. Annual uranium production is expected to be around 600 tonnes over 16 years. The project comprises 14 old tailings dams. First Uranium plans to construct the TSF to "accommodate future tailings deposition capacity requirements" at the MWS project. This will be for the tailings from the 14 old dams, once they have been reprocessed to remove certain metals and minerals, including uranium, pyrite and sulfur.
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