Dec 6 2010
Uranium Energy Corp (NYSE AMEX: UEC, the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has started the processing of the first shipment of uranium-loaded resins at its Hobson processing plant.
This shipment and the start of processing follows the Company's announcement on November 17, 2010 of the initial in-situ recovery (ISR) of uranium at Palangana in South Texas. The shipment, received at the Hobson plant on Sunday, November 28, consisted of 500 cubic feet of uranium-loaded resins contained within one of the Company's two U.S. Department of Transportation-approved tanker trailers specially built for this purpose.
Harry Anthony, Chief Operating Officer, stated, "Hobson is a state-of-the-art processing facility now operating under the supervision of experienced staff headed by VP Production Bob Underdown and Hobson Superintendent Greg Kroll. We are confident of standard and secure operations here. We will continue to ramp up production at the Palangana ISR project and the Hobson processing facility over the ensuing weeks and months."
The process of converting uranium loaded resin beads to marketable yellowcake (U3O8) at Hobson is as follows: stripping the uranium from the resin beads using a salt solution, precipitating the yellowcake slurry from the salt solution, filtering it from the remaining solution, then vacuum drying and packaging the yellowcake into drums for delivery.