The Uranium Skills Crisis: Inside Mining’s Next Big Challenge

Nuclear power needs uranium—but uranium needs experts. 

After nearly two decades of tertiary education neglect, anti-mining activism and anti-nuclear scare campaigns, the uranium industry has lost the people who knew how to find it, mine it, and process it. 

As most of the worlds advanced economies look towards nuclear energy, we’re facing an awkward reality: the experienced hands who led uranium projects through the 2006 boom have either retired or moved to other commodities within the sector. A generation of knowledge has been lost and unless big changes are made, and soon, we can’t get back. 

This skills shortage raises urgent questions: 

• Do we have the skills to find, mine and process uranium to the point of a U3O8 concentrate? 
• Are these skills available across established uranium, and what’s the general consensus of firms operating in other jurisdictions such as Argentina, Canada, and Southern Africa? 
• Are we training geologists with the skills to identify new areas of prospectivity, and do we have the skills to effectively mine uranium where it occurs and with the methods available? 
• Do we have enough skilled process engineers and metallurgists to design the plants required for the ore bodies we find and mine, and do we have the technical expertise to run those plants?  

Let’s look at what mining leaders are saying about this growing skills gap, and why it matters for the future of uranium supply. 

Something Strange Is Happening with Uranium Prices

Supply and demand have always dictated commodity prices. From the simplicity of the gold market to the complexity of rare earths, understanding supply and demand has been the critical factor in prices since commodities have been traded on global markets. What is relatively transparent in the gold sector is, however, very opaque when it comes to energy transition minerals such as lithium (yes Joe, I know it’s a chemical) and very difficult to judge when it comes to uranium. 

According to Justin Huhn of Uranium Insider: “We’ve got a 30 million-to-50-million-pound supply deficit in the market probably for the next five years. That’s what we’re looking at. And that’s what’s going to move the price.” 

The strange thing about the uranium market is this: despite the deficit Huhn describes, share prices haven’t budged. From explorers to producers, no company has seen the kind of price increases you’d expect – and the uranium price itself hasn’t risen enough to attract serious investment. 

Imelda Cotton, writing in Smallcaps News on August 26, reports that Kazatomprom, the world’s largest uranium miner, has cut its production guidance for 2025 by 5,000 tonnes due to ongoing uncertainties in sulfuric acid supply and related construction delays to new projects. 

The forecast has been lowered from between 30,500 tonnes and 31,500 tonnes of uranium to between 25,000 tonnes and 26,500 tonnes, but the company said it remains committed to fulfilling existing sales contracts. 

“We have previously warned that if limited access to sulfuric acid continues throughout this year and should we not succeed in catching up with the construction works schedule at the newly developed deposits in 2024, Kazatomprom’s 2025 production plan may also be affected,” the company told Cotton. 

Kazatomprom, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA 2022), accounts for 23% of global uranium production. A production guidance downgrade as significant as the one Cotton reported on recently would, or should, send prices higher on the uranium spot market, spur contract prices, and drive additional investment. It hasn’t. But if Huhn is right, and all indications are that his numbers are correct, are we ready to deploy the skills needed to find, mine, and produce uranium for the growing demand we see from around the world?  

The intent of this paper is to shed some light on the issue and draw some conclusions about the state of the skills market as it pertains to uranium. 

We will start with a quick look at the academic training available for geology, mining, and metallurgy, then move on to the skills available to the exploration sector, the mining of the commodity once it’s been found in economic quantities and grades, and then the vital task of producing a U3O8 concentrate, which requires highly skilled chemical engineers and metallurgists. 

All Our Uranium Experts Have Vanished

Geology is a huge all-encompassing term. The science of the earth. In Western Australia from where I’m writing, it tends to have a much narrower and much more specific meaning—exploration for commodities to be mined and refined.  

Western Australia has a huge endowment of natural resources some of which can be mined and processed economically. One of those is uranium. But are we training the future geologists who understand the different ore types in which uranium is found? Speaking with Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Science, it becomes clear that only a fraction of the 3rd year curriculum is devoted to the topic of sedimentary-hosted uranium deposits, in fact it’s Lecture 9, and even then, it’s coupled with sedimentary-hosted copper deposits.  

In 2024, around 50 students are enrolled in the course covering this topic, and there are no guarantees that any of them will proceed with further studies on these sedimentary-hosted ore bodies or even have more than a passing interest in them. 

The University of Western Australia teaches economic geology for a period of roughly 6 weeks, and during that time, uranium is not covered at all. 

The reason the university sector is critical in the hunt for uranium is that among many areas in Australia, the South Australian Government’s own Royal Commission into the nuclear fuel cycle states clearly that “there is good geological reason to believe new commercial deposits of uranium could be found in South Australia, but the challenge is that vast areas in the state remain unexplored.”  

While there are regulatory barriers to exploration across Australia, there needs to be well-trained exploration geologists at a variety of experience levels available to do the critical exploration work. At least at a senior level, the experience of geologists is transferable, but only many years of experience will dictate to what extent. 

Given that the last uranium cycle was in 2006/7, this inevitably means that we have lost around 16 years. That’s valuable time to train, and for practitioners to gain experience exploring for uranium in all the different styles of mineralisation, wherever it occurs. The problem exists in Australia, but not only Australia. Canada, which hosts the unconformity deposit in the Athabasca basin, faces similar issues in terms of skills taught in geology programs at tertiary level. 

According to Jon Hronsky (Paladin NED) during an interview on the Money of Mine Podcast (‘poddy’ for the MOM boys), “We find our biggest discoveries where we have the least data.” This is part of a concept he refers to as a ‘search space’. Dr Hronsky has been working in exploration geology for 40 years and suggests that if we don’t have the expertise to understand this Search Space then it’s likely that we’ll make that next large discovery, or alternatively; it will take much longer. 

In summary then, it doesn’t appear as though we will have very many graduates coming out of the tertiary institutions who have studied uranium-hosted formations, and as a corollary to that, if it’s not being taught, then it’s unlikely that uranium will catch the interest of very many young geologists. 

Mining Isn’t Actually the Problem

On the point of education gaps, university mining programs are more widespread than geology training. Across 3 sample locations that offer a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering: 

• 7 degree-granting institutions in Australia 
• 16 degree-granting institutions in the USA 
• 12 degree-granting institutions in Canada 

The mining of uranium, by contrast to the exploration for uranium, seems to pose far fewer problems. Many of the world’s mineable deposits are extracted by relatively conventional means, i.e., drill-blast-truck-shovel. 

Uranium is mined underground, but that is slowly changing as ISR/ISL has been proved up as a recognized extraction method. While ISR may not be considered traditional ‘mining’, it is increasingly being used. According to the WNA in 2022, ISR accounted for 55% of all uranium extraction in Canada.  

ISR has a flowsheet that looks like this in most cases 

The benefits are that there is very little surface disturbance, but also the extraction method is more aligned with the hydrocarbons industry than traditional mining. Looking at the Canadian example of oil sands, it is clear that ISR skills in that industry would be directly applicable to uranium extraction and using very similar methods. 

Mining or extraction of uranium using open pit, underground mining methods, or ISR doesn’t pose a huge skills problem for the uranium industry at this stage.  

What will pose difficulties for the industry is luring candidates with ISR skills away from well-paid, secure jobs in the oil and gas industry to potentially lower-paid jobs in the more fickle minerals industry. 

Overall, the mining of uranium would seem to pose less of a risk to industry in terms of the skills available because the methods are relatively straightforward, and the skills required are transferable across commodities. 

Nobody Knows How to Make Yellowcake Anymore

Processing mined uranium ore into uranium oxide (U3O8) involves several technically intricate steps, following a complex sequence: Crushing & Grinding → Leaching → Separation → Purification → Precipitation → Drying & Calcination → finally producing U3O8, commonly known as yellowcake.  

Initially, the uranium ore, either extracted via open-pit or underground mining methods, undergoes comminution, where it is crushed and ground to a fine particulate size to maximize the efficiency of subsequent extraction processes. 

The finely ground ore is subjected to leaching, wherein acid or alkaline solutions facilitate the dissolution of uranium. Sulfuric acid is predominantly used in acid leaching, although sodium carbonate solutions are sometimes employed for alkaline leaching. The resultant uranium-laden solution, known as the leachate, is then separated from the solid gangue through solid-liquid separation techniques such as filtration or decantation. 

The uranium is subsequently recovered from the leachate via ion exchange or solvent extraction methods. In ion exchange, uranium ions are adsorbed onto a resin matrix, whereas in solvent extraction, organic solvents selectively complex with uranium ions. These processes serve to concentrate uranium in a purified aqueous phase. 

The concentrated uranium solution is then subjected to precipitation. Chemical precipitants like ammonia or hydrogen peroxide are introduced to induce the formation of uranium oxide (U3O8). The precipitate is subsequently separated from the supernatant, followed by dewatering, drying, and packaging of the U3O8 product. This series of operations ensures the efficient and safe extraction of uranium, prepared for further refinement and utilization within the nuclear fuel cycle.  

The above is well known and well understood by practitioners in the field, but as with exploration, there are far fewer professionals in these fields than there have been for many decades. The reasons are many and varied (politics, anti-nuclear activism, etc.), but one of the critical ones is the time between cycles of interest in the commodity. The last cycle was in 2006/7, and the elapsed time between then and now has seen geologists, metallurgists, and even board directors vacate the field for other commodities or retire from the industry. This creates a big gap in the skills available in a critical area for the uranium sector. 

A quick scan of university programs across 3 uranium jurisdictions shows that between Australia, Canada and the USA there are 11 degree-granting institutions that offer metallurgy programs that specifically cover uranium processing. Some of those courses are part of Nuclear Engineering programs which cover the nuclear fuel cycle including processing to achieve a U3O8. This is not to say that many elements covered in courses at other institutions are not relevant to uranium processing, but rather to illustrate the point that it is a topic that has been pushed to the side of technical education, and that there will be knock-on effects for the broader industry over time. 

Here’s Where We Stand Today

With uranium and nuclear energy being discussed widely across the world as a potential solution to energy security, as well as a zero-carbon dioxide emissions approach to energy generation, are we in a skills surplus or a skills deficit? 

The verdict from our perspective is that for exploration geology, we are in a serious skills shortage. 

Mining is different, given the transferability of skills across commodities. While there are never enough mining engineers to satisfy whole-of-industry demand, we are better placed for the uranium industry than with geology or processing. 

The most troubling aspect of the skills shortage pertains to processing uranium ore into a U3O8 concentrate product. This primary metallurgical function is the precursor to all further processing that ends in the nuclear fuel cycle—yet we face a critical shortage of people who can design and operate modern processing plants. Certainly, nowhere near enough are studying these areas at tertiary level either. 

With a new nuclear fuel cycle upon us, these issues need to be rectified as soon as possible. 

About the Author

Greg Preston is a Partner at Stanton Chase’s Denver and Perth offices, where he serves as Director and Global Subsector Leader for Mining & Minerals Processing. With over two decades in executive search and previous consulting experience with major miners like BHP and Rio Tinto, he specializes in placing senior technical and operational leaders across the natural resources sector.  

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following industry leaders who contributed to this exercise: 

• Jon Hronsky of Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) 
• Felicity Repacholi of Recharge Metals (ASX: REC) 
• Stephen Mann of Piche Resources (ASX:PR2) 
• Jono Fisher of Cauldron Energy (ASX:CXU) 
• Peter Bewick of Hamelin Gold (ASX:HMG) 
• Melissa Holzberger former NED of Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) 
• Jaz Diab of Global Nuclear Security Partners 
• Simon Donegan of BDB Process Consultants 
• John Vagenas of Metallurgical Systems 
• The boys from the Money of Mine Poddy—for providing very interesting content for industry insiders and outsiders