IF necessary, two blasts a week are done at the Rössing Uranium mine near Swakopmund. When a blast takes place, all the workers are informed in the morning of that day, so that all the necessary safety protocols are met.
The team drills 18-metre-deep holes which are filled with explosives and detonated once all the equipment has been moved 300 metres from the blast site to ensure that nothing is damaged. People have to be 750 metres away from the blast site. The pit is currently 390 metres deep, about five kilometres long and about two kilometres wide. After blasting, the ore is loaded onto haul trucks and delivered to the primary crusher where it is crushed and transported by a conveyor belt to the processing plant. Here the material is processed and the uranium is packed into drums which are transported by rail to the Walvis Bay harbour from where they are shipped overseas.
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