enCore Energy Corp. (NYSE American: EU) (TSXV: EU) has reached a milestone after successfully restarting its production pipeline at its South Texas Rosita ISR Uranium Central Processing Plant.
On Thursday, the Dallas-based company announced the restart of its Rosita uranium plant using the in-situ recovery production process.
In-situ recovery is used to extract minerals, such as uranium, from ore deposits without physically removing the ore from the ground. Instead, it involves circulating a solution through the ore body to dissolve and recover the desired minerals.
The process involves oxygenated water circulating through the satellite ion exchange facility and being injected back into the uranium ore body. The oxygen addition starts shortly after injecting groundwater with uranium concentrations in the production wells.
The company will increase uranium concentration in the satellite facility over the coming weeks and is anticipating its first shipment of yellowcake uranium in the next 45 to 60 days.
The Rosita plant is around 60 miles from Corpus Christi, Texas with a production capacity of 800,000 pounds of triuranium octoxide per year.
The plant is designed to process uranium feed from multiple satellite operations, all located in the South Texas area and is one of 11 licensed uranium processing plants in the United States, three of which are owned by enCore.
“It is with great satisfaction that in less than 20 months, the enCore team completed the refurbishment and upgrading of the Rosita CPP from long-term cold standby to monitor well ring installation, wellfield pattern and infrastructure installation and construction of a new satellite IX facility,” CEO Paul Goranson said.
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The company said that trace uranium was detected in the produced solutions within 72 hours, and the uranium concentrations from the wellfield patterns are building.
During operations, the Rosita CPP will receive uranium-loaded resins from the satellite ion exchange facility. The uranium recovered from the loaded resins will be concentrated, precipitated, dried and packaged as yellowcake.
Goranson said the company has aggressively worked through supply chain disruptions and expanded its operating workforce to meet its targeted production schedule.
“We are very pleased to have our first uranium production underway at enCore, and we are honoured to be both the first uranium producer in Texas in 10 years and the newest uranium producer in the United States,” Goranson said.
The company also plans to open a second uranium processing plant, the Alta Mesa CPP, to start production in 2024. enCore acquired Alta mesa from Energy Fuels (TSX: EFR) in February.
The rising demand for carbon-neutral energy sources combined with a supply shortage has caused the price of uranium to rise to a 15-year high. Uranium prices have spiked to US$80 after being $50.6 in January.
natalia@mugglehead.com
