International Uranium Resources Evaluation Project (IUREP) national favourability studies: Vietnam

The Chaine Annamatique represents the last of the three orogenic episodes that shook Indochina and forms most of Vietnam's boundary with Laos, In south Vietnam the mountains which have a north-south trend are formed of granites, gneisses and mica schists and are inseparable from the anti-hercynian formations. Iron ore, gold, lead, copper, tin, wolfraun, bismuth and molybdenium minerals are found. Plans had been made in 1960 to prospect for uranium but no information is available on whether that work was ever done. The only evidence of occurrences of nuclear raw materials is that titaniferous sands occur in several coastal regions and that uranium was once listed as having been produced in Forth Vietnam. Although the geology of Vietnam is not very conducive to the formation and preservation of uranium deposits it is possible that because of the granite terrain and presence of other metalliferous minerals, the Speculative Potential should be stated as in category 2 i.e. from 1,000 to 10,000 tonnes uranium. (author)