Treatment of mine waters discharged from underground uranium mines

Contaminated mine water treatment before discharging into surface water streams is mandatory for the uranium mines within the National Uranium Company SA - Romania in order to limit supplementary exposure of the population living downside the mine sites. Present mine water treatment plants have to be upgraded in order to ensure the stringent limits for uranium and radium concentrations even when processing waters resulted from the mine flooding process. Ion exchange method is used for uranium removal while radium is separated by adsorption on activated carbon. Separation process and performance are presented for the water treatment plant at an active mine and at a closed mine. (author)