L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

5000 tU 3 O 8 (4240 tU) over the next 10 years dominated by projects
in the Witwatersrand Basin and in the Karoo Uranium province.
South Africa is planning to build four to six new nuclear reactors by
2030 and in order to secure nuclear fuel supplies for South Africa’s
growing electricity needs gold miners are now looking into the possibility
of reviving their old mine dumps to extract uranium and spur
investment in expansions, new capacity, new projects and grass
roots exploration.
Of significant importance is the fact that in many South Africa
production centers uranium is mined in conjunction with gold. Gold
alone is processed in the metallurgical plants and all costs are attributable
to gold. Although the uranium passes through the processing
plant, there is no uranium recovery and the residue is deposited into
the surface tailings ponds. 22
In South Africa, a stronger market and supportive government
policy stimulated at least eight companies to actively explore, develop
and mine deposits in recent years.
In Tanzania, about 70 licenses have been issued to companies
interested in uranium exploration and investigations of Karoo-age
sediments in southern Tanzania (the Mkuju River, Mbamba Bay and
Southern Tanzania Projects) and paleochannel associated calcrete
and sandstone hosted uranium targets within the Bahi catchment of
central Tanzania (the Bahi North and Handa Projects), but expenditure
and drilling details were not reported by the government. Updated
resource estimates and pre-feasibility studies have been published
by the companies involved.
Exploration activities are also known to have been conducted in
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi,
Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Zambia, although details and
associated costs were not reported by the governments of these
countries.
Lithium. During the perestroika years, the Russian lithium industry
switched to imported lithium carbonate supplied mainly from
South America 23. This was caused by the intended price policy of
lithium products producers who used cheap hydrominerals and loss
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