Bacterial Leaching of a Carbonate Bearing Uranium Ore

According to the “Club of Rome” the continuously increasing world-wide demand for raw materials will cause an exhaustion of non-reclaimable resources within the next few decades (Meadows 1972). On the other hand, the resources are not regarded as a static magnitude but as a dynamic one which increases in accordance with scientific and technnological progress (Rechtziegler, 1973; Heilbroner, 1973). Hence, new deposits may be discovered by the improvement of conventional methods and by the development of new geochemical and geophysical prospecting methods. But discovering a new ore body does not mean that mining will be feasible because several factors may influence the metal winning process, e.g. low amount of total ore, low concentration of valuable metal, large dissemination of ore.