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Cameco is restarting its Blind River refinery after a four-week pandemic-related shutdown.
The Saskatoon-headquartered uranium miner and fuel processor will restart the plant during the week May 18 and expects to reach regular production a week later.
Both the Blind River and its sister Ontario plant, the Port Hope Conversion Facility, were placed on temporary care and maintenance on April 8.
The Blind River plant handles uranium ore concentrates received from mines in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.
The semi-refined uranium trioxide (UO3) product made there is shipped to Port Hope for further processing into uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
Cameco is one of the world's largest suppliers of fuel for nuclear reactors.
The company said government and public health directives concerning screening protocols and other health and saftey measures were causing "workforce uncertainty" at Port Hope, which is considered a complex operation that needs to run as a continuous, uninterrupted, process.
It forced Cameco to suspend production at Port Hope as well as Blind River since the majority of the UO3 used in Port Hope comes from northeastern Ontario.
Cameco said the workforce situation is now stabilized and significant safety measures are in place at all its facilities to limit the risk of COVID-19.
“The provinces and communities where we operate are certainly not out of the woods when it comes to this global pandemic, and we must remain vigilant in how we manage our activities during these challenging times,” said Cameco president-CEO Tim Gitzel in a May 11 news release.
“However, we are confident that we can maintain the required roster of qualified operators to run the UF6 plant going forward, enabling us to carefully bring the plant and the UO3 refinery back into production.”
The Blind River refinery is located halfway between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury on the north shore of Lake Huron.
