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Uranium firm opens Baker Lake office

Areva seeks community support for mine and mill on Inuit land

JANE GEORGE

Areva Resources Canada Ltd., owner of Kiggavik and Sissons uranium properties 80 kilometres west of Baker Lake, officially opened a liaison office this week in Baker Lake, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a feast for the entire community.

Areva, based in Saskatchewan, wants to build a uranium mine at the site.

Areva is the second-largest uranium mining company in Canada and its parent company in France is the second largest in the world, said Kiggavik’s project manager, Barry McCallum.

With more than 100 million pounds of uranium, the Kiggavik-Sissons mine would add considerably to the company’s uranium production, he said.

The proposed mine would include a combination of open pit and underground mining and a mill to produce ore concentrate. The fly-in, fly-out operation would bring hundreds of jobs to Baker Lake during its development phase and at least 300 permanent jobs during mining operations.

Construction could take from two to three years, followed by 10 years of production and up to three years of decommissioning.

“A slower rate of production or discovery of new material would increase this,” McCallum said.

The proposed mine would also involve the construction of either an all-season or winter road.

William Noah, a former MLA and mayor, will staff the company’s liaison office in Baker Lake. Noah, who has visited Areva’s operations in northern Saskatchewan, will be at the office every afternoon to answer questions about the company and its plans.

Areva has explored the Kiggavik-Sisson deposits since the company acquired the properties in 1993. Areva continued to drill there until 1997, but, the development of a mine wasn’t viable then, McCallum said.

Now, the price for uranium, a radioactive mineral used for fuel in nuclear reactors or as an explosive agent in nuclear weapons, has jumped to more than $50 a pound.

McCallum said Areva’s plan now is to gather more information and continue an evaluation of the mine’s feasibility.

“A year from now we’ll know whether we can develop.”

If Areva goes ahead, the environmental assessment process for the Kiggavik-Sissons project could take between four and five years.

McCallum said the mine project would also have to be “socially acceptable.”

“We absolutely need community support,” he said.

Baker Lake Mayor David Aksawnee told Nunatsiaq News that it’s still too early to say whether Baker Lake will back the development.

But this community backing will be essential.

That’s because 70 per cent of the Kiggavik-Sissons Project sits on Inuit-owned land. The deposit is basically the same one that Urangesellschaft Canada Ltd. wanted to develop 16 years ago.

A hamlet plebiscite rejected that project on March 26, 1990, with nine of 10 voters saying no. A few months later, the company asked a federal environmental assessment panel for an “indefinite delay” of the review process.

“It’s the same deposit. We are a different company,” said McCallum. “We have a record of mining uranium in northern Canada safely, with significant benefits to communities.”

McCallum said Areva’s northern Saskatchewan operations have benefited the local communities: 50 per cent of its workers are aboriginal due to its “very extensive selection and training program” and partnering with local colleges.

“We’re already talking to the educational authorities here,” McCallum said.

Areva has already sponsored an award of excellence for a local student from Baker Lake who achieves the highest grades in math, science and Inuktitut.

But, in 1990, the residents of Baker Lake weren’t convinced that the economic benefits of mining were a good trade-off for the negative environmental impacts.

Most of the Inuit in Baker Lake are known as the “caribou Inuit” because of their exclusive historic dependence on caribou. The only inland community in Nunavut, Baker Lake is too far from open water for people to rely on sea mammals for country food.

But McCallum said since 1975 modern uranium mining practices mean uranium mining is not harming the environment. He said environmental monitoring is rigorous, and he points to Areva’s track record.

“No unacceptable impacts would be permitted,” McCallum said.

However, open-pit uranium mining leaves behind tailings waste that is almost as radioactive as the uranium itself. Some researchers contend these tailings remain hazardous for more than 250,000 years.

It is most often associated with an increased cancer rate among humans, in addition to birth defects, high infant mortality and chronic lung, eye, skin and reproductive illnesses.

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