TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Uranium giant Cameco may be ready to start dewatering its Cigar Lake project, in Saskatchewan, by the end of this year, CEO Jerry Grandey indicated on Wednesday.

The company has made progress in recent weeks towards sealing the water inflow that opened up last summer, and “our confidence in our ability to remediate Cigar Lake is growing,” Grandey told analysts and investors on a conference call.

“We expect the remediation work that will allow us to get to the dewatering stage will be complete by the end of the year,” he said.

The inflow that flooded the mine last August was traced to a fissure in the top of a tunnel on the 420 m level, and the company has now decided to backfill that level completely, COO Tim Gitzel said.

Some 1 000 m3 of concrete has already been poured in the north end of the tunnel, and “we're going to plug the entire drift”, he said.

The company is now reaching a point where the bulkhead will now be put in place, and the remaining concrete will be poured to complete the plug.

Once the seal is completed, the dewatering of shaft one is expected to begin.

Additional pumping capacity has also been installed at the project.

The Cigar Lake project, with proven and probable reserves of more than 226,3-million pounds uranium oxide, contains the biggest-known undeveloped high-grade uranium deposit in the world.

The mine was expected to start production as early as 2008, before a rock fall caused a flood in October 2006, forcing the company to halt development.

Cameco only received approval to start dewatering the mine in June last year, after successfully testing an underground seal, and was approaching the bottom of shaft one when the mine flooded once again in August.

Grandey has since declined to speculate on when production could start, until the mine has been dewatered.

Cameco is the operator of the Cigar Lake project, and owns 50%, while Paris-based Areva holds 37%, Idemitsu Canada Resources owns 8% and Tepco Resources owns the remaining 5%.

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