An ISL plant may operate at 5000
Saturday, September 4th, 2010An ISL plant may operate at 5000 gallons per minute. Running 24 hours daily, the plant would process 7.2 million gallons of water. Operating costs are based upon cost per thousand gallons of water. “This includes electricity, reagents and labor,” said Anthony. On a daily basis, it would cost more than $21,000 to run an ISL plant, based upon Anthony’s calculations of $3.03 per thousand gallons of water. Under this scenario, a plant might produce 2360 pounds of U3O8 every day or 80,000 pounds monthly. The cost to produce each pound would be $8.18. Using that math, the uranium grades would be about 44 parts per million (ppm) or 0.08. Anthony said, “I like to see 70ppm or higher.” That comes to a uranium grade of 0.13.
Another way to evaluate a company’s uranium property is looking at each part of its development costs.
alec sohmer