Nov 21, 2012 - 12:35 PM AKST
Tim Bradner, Alaska Journal of Commerce
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Another Southeast proposed underground mining project at an advanced stage is a rare earths project at Bokan Mountain, also on Prince of Wales Island bout 35 miles from Ketchikan, and also with good access by water.
Ucore Rare Metals Inc., the developer, plans to have its preliminary economic assessment completed and published very soon, Ucore’s chief operating officer, Ken Collison, told the AMA, also on Nov. 8.
A press release with the major conclusions of the PEA would be published first, and followed 45 days later with the release of the full report.
The schedule now calls for a feasibility study for the mine, the final step before approval by the owners, to be completed by the end of 2013.
“Once permits are issued, and how long that will take is the big question, construction would take about one-and-a-half years,” Collison told the miners association.
Ucore would mine just more than 1,000 tons of ore per day but would use a new crushing sorting technique to identify ore with the highest content of rare earths, Collison said. Only about 375 tons of ore per day would be processed.
The remaining waste rock would be temporarily stored on the surface but would eventually be placed back underground as “back-fill” in the mine.
If the mine proceeds to production it would employ about 170 in its operations, with hourly workers on a two-week on, two-week off schedule and members of the management team on a one-week on, one-week off schedule. Ucore also plans to open an office in Ketchikan soon.
The power requirement at a Bokan Mountain mine would be about 3 to 4 megawatts in operation but at the beginning, when the ore process mill is being started, the requirement is expected to reach 6 megawatts.
Collison said Ucore is discussing the possibility of importing liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from a supplier in the Pacific Northwest to fuel power generation.
“It would be about half the cost of using diesel,” he said.
The plan now is to make two concentrates at the mine containing rare earth elements, but Ucore is also experimenting with a new technology that could allow the concentrates to be separated into three rare earth metals at the mine.
The elements would be dysprosium, neodymium and erbium. Laboratory tests performed by IntelliMet LLC, a Montana firm, have demonstrated that the elements can be successfully separated from a composite of solutions that replicate the ores to be mined at Bokan Mountain, Ucore announced Oct. 3 in a press release.
If processing of the rare earth metals could be done at the site it would lessen the dependence of the U.S. on China as a source of rare earth processing. Rare earths are commonly used in technology systems.
Read more: http://www.alaskajournal.com/...y-economic-assessments/#ixzz2DRL10oAA
http://www.alaskajournal.com/...y-economic-assessments/#ixzz2DRKSudIj
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