Decline in India's Uranium production

Department of Atomic Energy sources said it has taken steps to increase the production to maintain the supply and demand

At a time when India is trying to ramp up its uranium import RPT import, its own domestic production of the yellow cake has declined by 10-15% after operations in the country's oldest and richest uranium mine in Jaduguda in Jharkhand has been stopped by the state government.

Department of Atomic Energy sources said it has taken steps to increase the production from other mines to maintain the supply and demand, but the low quality of ore from other mines has led to increase in the production cost.

"The overall mining production has gone down substantially by 10-15% after the mining in Jaduguda has been stopped," said Pinaki Roy, Corporate Communications Manager of the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL).

The government has often cited "mismatch between demand and supply of domestic uranium" as the reason for under-functioning of the nuclear power reactors. Of the 20 reactors, 10 nuclear power stations use domestic fuel and generate 2840 MW of electricity.

Apart from importing uranium from Kazakhstan and Russia, India is in the process of getting the ore from Australia, with which it inked a pact for the same few years back.

Jaduguda uranium mine, the deepest operating underground mine of the country, is in uninterrupted operation since 1968. It has a depth of nearly 3000 feet, one of the deepest in the country. Of its daily production of 5000 tonnes, UCIL mined 700 tonnes of ore from Jaduguda mine.