ARMZ starts building ISL pilot site at Dobrovolnoye deposit

Thursday, 15 October 2020

Rusburmash is a geological exploration and drilling subsidiary of ARMZ, the uranium mining division of state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

JSC Dalur, another ARMZ subsidiary, received a permit for the project in June 2017, and ARMZ announced in November last year that Rusburmash planned to drill 238 wells at the site. ARMZ said this week that 218 wells had been drilled.

Dinis Ezhurov, general director of Rusburmash, said in the ARMZ statement that the drilling technique used and the subsequent "abandonment" of exploration wells preserve the "original integrity" of the geological massif and minimise the impact of drilling on the environment.

The surveys revealed the characteristics and boundaries of the ore body, and the uranium content, ARMZ said, and the "industrial value" of the deposit, as well as the efficiency and environmental safety of its development using in-situ leaching were confirmed.

Nikolay Poponin, general director of Dalur JSC, said the scale of the Dobrovolnoye deposit is comparable to the Dalmatovskoye field, which the company has been developing since 1984. Production work at the Zverinogolovsky district will create more than 300 new jobs and provide the nuclear industry with uranium "for several decades", he said. The deposit is of the strip type and the total length of uranium mineralisation is about 18km, he added.

Hydrogeological studies of the Dobrovolnoye deposit were completed last month. This enabled the study of the filtration properties of the ore-bearing strata and the salt composition of natural groundwater, ARMZ said. The studies "once again proved the isolation of the ore body from the overlying aquifers", it added, referring to Hydrogeological Expedition No. 30 of state geological enterprise Gidrospetsgeologiya.

The design documentation and the results of engineering surveys for work to build the ISL pilot site have been approved by FGU Glavgosexpertiz, ARMZ said.