Saghand [Sagend]
32°28'45"N 55°24'30"E
In February 2003, Iran announced that it had begun mining uranium deposits at Saghand near the central Iranian city of Yazd, and was constructing a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, located 200 miles southeast of Tehran.
The Saghand [Sagend] uranium ore deposit in Yazd covers 100-150 square kilometers, with reserves estimated at 3,000-5,000 tons of uranium oxide. As of the mid-90s exploratory and preparatory work was in progress at the deposit, though exploitation and extraction work had not begun.
A production plant for processing the uranium ore into concentrate is reportedly planned for the area. In October 1989 Iran announced plans to build a uranium milling plant near the Saghand mine. The Argentine National Institute for Applied Research, INVAP, signed an $18 million contract to build a series of unsafeguarded facilities for processing uranium ore, although Argentina announced in January 1992 that it was withdrawing from the project under US pressure. China may have subsequently contributed to completing this plant.
Iran has denied unconfirmed reports that underground mines in the vicinity are being used for detonation testing associated with nuclear weapons development.
Mohammad Ghannadi-Maragheh, Vice President for Nuclear Fuel Production of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), discussed the project at the World Nuclear Association Annual Symposium held in London 3-5 September 2003. The mine project is located 185 km north-east of Yazd, and covers an area of 20 hectares. The exploration completed in 1994 concentrated on areas, and resulted in a calculated reserve of 1.58 million metric tonnes of uranium ore with an average grade of 533 ppm (0.0533% U). This translates into a total uranium contents of 842 metric tonnes. The underground mine will have two shafts, each 350 meters deep. Ores with grades above 300 ppm will be sent to the uranium mill, while ores with grades between 100 and 300 ppm will be exploited by heap leaching.
After accomplishment of geological and exploratory operation and preparation of preliminary and detailed designs, mine development is under operation and was expected to be finished by the end of 2004. After development stage, which meant opening the mine, exploitation activities will be started. The lifetime of mine from the beginning of year 2005 with a capacity of 120,000 tons of ore to be as yearly production is anticipated 17 years.
Saghand uranium mines are located in northeast of Yazd province, in central Iran desert (Kavir). This area has a dry weather and humidity is too low. In summer, the weather is very hot and in the winter it is cold, so that the maximum temperature in the summer goes up to 45ºC and in the winter decreases to -15ºC.
In deposit No. 2 mineralization is formed at the interval between 270m to 400m depth in lensoid bodies with the slope of 5-30 degree. The plan dimensions of this deposit are 300 by 400 meters. Ore reserve of this deposit according to two categories of C and D is estimated as 1,398,000 tons with the average grade of 562 ppm. mineralization in deposit No. 1 begins from the ground level in the form of dispersed lenses with the slopes of 50-70 degrees to the depth of 16 meters. The plan dimensions of this deposit are 200 by 300 meters. Ore reserve of this deposit according to two categories of C and D is calculated as 152,000 tons with the average grade of 459 ppm.
Accessing to the ore bodies will be possible through to shafts (the main and ventilation shafts) with 4 meters in diameter, which are situated at the south of deposit No. 2 down to depth of 350 meters. At the depth of 100m, a tunnel connecting the two deposits will be excavated with the length of 700 meters. A 700 meters tunnel will be cut to connect these two shafts to the deposit No. 1 in the deposit No.2 exploration will be done using for levels which are connected to two shafts the mining methods used to mine the deposit No.2 are called room and pillar, cut and fill, sub level stopping. Mining methods used to mine deposit No.1 is a mixture of open pit and under lower levels will be exploited using a connecting tunnel between deposits No.1 and 2 at the level of 100m by under ground mining procedures.
Exploratory activities in Saghand area started after victory of Islamic revolution by using the information resulted from geographical air borne surveys. Until the end of 1989 most of those activation were in the stage of preliminary exploration and overall in area extending to 200 hectares. Detail of exploration: From the beginning of 1990 detail exploration works started and priority was given to the area covering anomalies No. 1 and 2 due to a better perspective from ore reserve point of view. Finally in the limited area of the two anomalies with the dimensions of (300 by 400m) and (200 by 300m) respectively detail exploratory works were performed.
In detail exploration stage, 600 Iranian and Chinese experts worked to yield totally 104 reports in different related fields such as: performing 10786m drilling, 18737m logging using 12 different elements, 214 sheet of maps. With a variety of scales, 21217m well is washing. Petrographical and geochmical studies Trench digging and so on. At the end, by using information from the above activities, logging procedures performed by geophysical group of ELG company of Hungary and lithological logs prepared by Iranian and Chinese experts ore reserve calculation was performed for the space between ground level to the depth of 350m according to the results obtained from exploration activities technical and economical evalutions and also preliminary and detail technical designs were performed yielding more than 4000 maps and 135 volumes of reports.
As of 11 April 2000, Russian 2-meter resolution KVR-1000 imagery coverage was not available via the SPIN-2 service on TerraServer, nor was archived Space Imaging IKONOS 1-meter imagery of this facility available on the CARTERRA™ Archive.
