Rossing Uranium Mine Case Study

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the major reason the influence the location and the success of a mining operation is its geology. Geology can be classified as either physical or historical geology. Physical geology is the study of Earth materials, operating as minerals and rocks, as well as the processes operating within Earth and on its surface (Monroe, 2001). Geology influences the strength of the rocks, the ability to process the given deposit with existing processing techniques and stability of excavation made in the mineral deposit. This emphasizes the importance of geology to mining operations hence it should be properly studied to avoid complication in future operations. This paper will discuss the geology of the Rossing Uranium Mine, located
Source Abraham (2009) The upper formation shows a high content of metasedimentary rocks but the granitic rocks becomes more dominant as depth increases.
Uranium mineralization in the Rossing area has been known for some time, but the commercial uranium was only discovered in 1976 (Abraham, 2009). the uranium here is found in primary and secondary uranium mineral. the primary uranium minerals, uraninite and betafitite, are found in the granitic rocks. Beta-uranophane, uranophane and boltwoodite are some of the secondary uranium minerals and the can be found in granitic and the host rocks.
Unfortunately, the primary minerals are locked with other mineralization such as oxides of iron, feldspar and quartzite making them difficult to process. For this reason the economical mineralization of the mine is in the form of the above-mentioned secondary uranium minerals.

3. COMPARISON WITH OTHER URANIUM DEPOSIT
To enhance the knowledge on the uranium deposit, the paper will try to draw some parallels with other uranium deposits in the world. This paper will use some of the major uranium deposit in the
The mine is located on the Damara Orogenic belt, as other uranium mines in the area. The belt is divided in several zones and the Rossing deposit lies on the southern central zone which has basement rock of granitic origin. The uranium at Rossing is found in both primary and secondary uranium but due to economical reasons, the mine only process the secondary mineral. the secondary uranium minerals are Beta-uranophane, uranophane and boltwoodite. Some comparison was done with other uranium deposit in the world and that has shown that each deposit is unique in many ways. there were some similarities especially with the types of rocks in the mineralization