Kazakhstan
Mining Directorate No. 6
This page is part of the Facilities Collection.
Mining Directorate No. 6 was established in 1981. During the Soviet era, material from the Directorate was processed at Vostokredmet’s Combine No. 6 in Chkalovsk (near Khodjent), Tajikistan. Kazakhstan terminated shipment of uranium to Tajikistan in 1993 and redirected shipments of uranium ore to Tselinnyy Mining and Chemical Combine in Stepnogorsk. 1
Mining Directorate No. 6 operates at the in-situ leaching (ISL) deposits at North and South Karamurun, Irkol, North and South Kharasan, and Zarechnoye. The Directorate has total reserves of 120,000t. A total of 1,300 people are employed by the Directorate. The uranium slurry produced at the company is transported to KazSabton in Stepnogorsk, some 800km north of Chiili, where it is turned into purified U3O8 powder with uranium content of over 85 percent. In 1996, production at Chiili was about 300t/year, at 50 percent of installed capacity. 2
Glossary
- Uranium
- Uranium is a metal with the atomic number 92. See entries for enriched uranium, low enriched uranium, and highly enriched uranium.
Sources
- Oleg Bukharin and William Potter, “Kazakhstan--A Nuclear Profile,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, April 1994, p. 186.
- Heinrich Graul, “Uranium mining as seen in Situ,” The Uranium Institute, No. 6, pp. 17-18; Tatyana Shkolnik, “The Development of Uranium Reserves in the Republic of Kazakhstan,” Report Provided to CISNP, August 1994, p. 2; Carole A. Grey, “Up Front in the CIS,” Nuclear Engineering International, May 1994, pp. 16-20.