MODELING OF ACIDIFICATION EFFICIENCY ON URANIUM PRODUCTION

Abstract

The uranium is the fuel most widely used for nuclear energy as its atoms split apart relatively easily. Though its common metal found in many rocks all over the world, for producing the nuclear energy its specific type U-235 is used that makes up less than one percent of the uranium in the world. Kazakhstan and Canada are the world leaders of exporting of that type of uranium used for nuclear energy providing. Uranium in Kazakhstan is produced by the method of in-situ leaching.

In-situ leaching (ISL) mining technology was developed in the 1960s for recovering uranium from a roll-front type deposits. ISL (in situ leaching) or ISR (in situ recovery) is a production technic which allow to produce metals thanks to a leaching process performed directly inside geological reservoir on the mineralization. The metal change from solid phase to liquid phase due to a leaching solution injected. The ISL method allow to strongly limit the pollution in surface at the difference of classic mining extraction that involved the creation of radioactive rock stockpiles or radioactive tailings.

The balance between the volumes of injected and extractive liquids is very important for the ISL process and must always be observed, but it is not always possible to observe this rule during the extraction process, so there may be cases of overproduction /excessive injection on the scale of a block or cell. Thus, this leads to the need to model hydrodynamic behavior for a better understanding of the acidification and extraction process.