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BAKER LAKE - Anyone with concerns over uranium mining in Baker Lake will have the opportunity to have their voice heard this coming month.

Areva Resources Canada will be holding a two-day information session on their mining projects in Baker on April 16-17.

Areva manager of Nunavut affairs Barry McCallum goes over the company's plans for uranium mining with a group of elders during a recent meeting in Baker Lake. - photo courtesy of Areva

The company's manager of Nunavut affairs, Barry McCallum, said Areva's project engineer, technical staff, general manager and environmental assessment staff will be present to answer questions and receive feedback.

"We announced the project proposal this past fall, and it's gone through the planning commission's conformity check and is currently being screened by the Nunavut Impact Review Board," said McCallum.

"Our plan for this year has always been to have a series of open houses.

"This will be the first of two in Baker, and we will have one in each Kivalliq community during the year.

"In fact, this information was presented at our regional committee workshop about three weeks ago in Rankin Inlet."

The regional committee is comprised of representatives from each Kivalliq community and meets three or four times a year to discuss project issues.

Areva plans to visit each community to explain the proposal it has on the table, as well as the environmental-assessment process.

The company also wants to listen to Kivalliq residents, and is prepared to change its plans based on the input it receives.

Areva's proposal calls for three open-pit mines, a uranium mill, an airstrip and an accommodations complex to be located at its Kiggavik site.

It also calls for an open-pit and underground mine at its Sissons site, about 17 km southwest of Kiggavik, with a road linking the two sites.

Tailings management would follow the in-pit model used at Areva's McClean Lake operation in Saskatchewan.

Once the company completely mines out an open pit, the pit is converted to a tailings facility before any of the ore is processed.

The tailings produced in the mill are then piped under water in the pit without being exposed to the air.

The company takes the ore from the pit, crushes it, extracts the uranium and puts the tailings back in the pit so there is no above-ground tailings facility, damn or ponds.

McCallum said chemicals are added in the extraction process, but for the most part, tailings are simply ore crushed to a fine sand with the uranium removed.

He said when all is said and done, the tailings will end up beneath the ground where the uranium ore was.

"It will then be capped and the tundra restored so the surface use of the land - after we're finished - will be the same as it was before.

"There will be no discharges to the water courses in the long-term, nor any elevated amounts of radiation.

"Hunting, trapping and travelling over that site will be the same after we're finished as it is before we start."

McCallum said Areva expects the lifespan of the projects to include two or three years of construction, 15 to 20 years of production and two to four years of decommissioning at their conclusion.

He said that indicates a 20- to 25-year presence based on the uranium found so far, with exploration continuing and additional prospects being investigated.

"That number could certainly increase with any new material found, but right now, we're looking at an operation of 400 to 600 people from the start of construction.

"Our corporate objective is to have more than 50 per cent Inuit content.

"We may not start right there, but we'll start as high as we can.

"We see no reason why we can't achieve the same employment targets we have in remote parts of northern Saskatchewan, where we have a mostly-aboriginal workforce."

Areva projects the environmental assessment will be completed in 2012.

Construction could start as early as the following year, with actual production beginning in 2015 and milling in 2017.

McCallum said the workforce will become substantial during the first or second year of construction, with hundreds on the job.

"When you look at the projected capital and operating costs, the money that would flow through the system for 100 million pounds of uranium would be in the area of $6 to $10 billion.

"Canada produces more uranium than any country in the world and does it all in northern Saskatchewan.

"What we're proposing for Baker is now a routine operation just several hundred kilometres to the south, which is still considered as Northern Canada."