Environmental management plan of the mining and industrial uranium complex in Brazil

The Mining and Industrial Complex of the Pocos de Caldas Plateau (CIPC) is located at Caldas, county in the southwest of Minas Gerais state. It is a plant of the Industrias Nucleares do Brazil S.A. -INB, the only installation in Brazil for the production of uranium concentrate (yellow-cake) as ammonium diuranate (Adu). The Environmental protection and control program in practice assures the environmental management plan, in operation, maintaining the Complex within technology standards required by updated environmental concepts. The mine is an open pit operation with a surface diameter of 1000 m and an actual average depth of 120 m. Some 44 x 106 m3 of the overburden material were used in embankments structures to civil engineering works in the implantation of several installations in CIPC, and the other portion of the removed material was deposited in two pre-selected areas having both an upper area of about 2,0 x 106 m2. The annual average volume of waters transported to chemical treatment is about 9,0 x 105 m3. The mill, in its full operation, processes 2500 t of ore per day and the solid and liquid tailings are directed to a waste pond system where are contained approximately 2,0 x 106 m3 (2,2 x 106 t) of solid wastes with an estimation of further 70 x 105 m3 to be disposed. The upper surface of tailings pond is about 2,0 x 105 m2. Nowadays, the environmental protection and control program aims to the development of potential pollutant areas stabilization reintegrating them into their original features or adjusting them to other forms of laudable restoration. (authors). 1 fig