A STUDY OF THE BIOLEACHING OF A SPANISH URANIUM ORE .1. A REVIEW OF THE BACTERIAL LEACHING IN THE TREATMENT OF URANIUM ORES

The rapid growth of the nuclear power industry has led to the progress ive exhaustion of high grade reserves of uranium ores and new extracti on techniques have had to be developed for use with low grade ores. Th e expense of these techniques is, of course, important and one of the solutions proposed has been percolation leaching with the active parti cipation of micro-organisms. This paper intends to give a general over view of the phenomenon of uranium ore bioleaching, in which a wide var iety of bacterial species intervene in symbiotic association. Microbio logical activity inside the heap is conditioned by its mineral composi tion and environmental and operational factors must also be taken into account. The industrial application of these techniques, particularly in Spain, is studied.