LIMOUSIN

BESSINES, SITE INDUSTRIEL DE

LE BRUGEAUD

IV.A. Surface and underground mine

Cogéma operated the mine for a dozen years. Underground operation ended in 1967; all activity was to end in 1973 [Amis 77; CEARa 67].

The mine was a cavity 15 ha at the surface, 130 m deep with galleries 260 m deep. To dig this hole, about 20 million t of rock had to be removed. Cogéma extracted 600,000 t/yr of ore [OCDE 83].

IV. B. Leaching installations

Heap leaching of poor-grade ore took place on the bed of the mine from 1968 to 1971. Simo also treated by leaching a part of the slope with waste rock at Le Brugeaud and treated in situ the ore in certain galleries. 

Cogéma and Desgraupes state that Simo had treated by leaching 8,408,000 t of ore at 0.17% by the end of 1990. This figure does not seem to include the heap leaching.

The installations had produced uranate containing 934,000 t or uranium by the end of 1990 [Desgraupes 91].

IV.C. Solid waste

The wastes are stored on two areas and come from Bessines and three other sites:

IV.C.1. THE SURFACE MINE:

--the Simo plant, from 1978 to 1987, 5,776,000 t of tailings (129.5 TBq of radium 226);

--le Bouchet, between 1973 and 1978, 6000 t of tailings from rich ore (less than 1.7 TBq of radium);

--Simo plant, materials resulting from dismantling;

--the slope of waste rock at Le Brugeaud itself, 1,512,000 t of residues from heap lixiviation (4.7 TBq of radium). Cogema imported these residues to cover the other waste in the mine as part of its remediation program [Andra 99].

IV.C.2. A SLOPE OF WASTE ROCK from the mining operation of Le Brugeaud (no deposits since 1992):

--the Simo site (le Brugeaud, la Croix-de-Breuil), 5,253,000 t of tailings. Between 1968 and the beginning of 1989, 8,018,000 of tailings from leaching (12.6 TBq of radium) were stored on the slope. A total of 2,765,000 t of leaching residues have since been removed to cover waste in the surface mine at Brugeaud and in the basin at Lavaugrasse. 

--dismantling of Le Bouchet, transported between 1973 and 1978, or 16,790 t of earth and rubble and 1900 t of scrap metal (less than 1 TBq of radium);

--Pierrelatte, between 1968 and 1971, or 18,048 drums of various wastes, containing less than 1.4 kg of uranium 235 enriched to less than 6% [Cogéma 91a].

IV.D. Liquid effluents

For the leaching in situ, acid was blown into the ground. According to Amis de la Terre, "the CEA note[d] that 5 to 10 m3 per hour of natural water enters by infiltration to dilute the acid solutions. To this problem is added the leaking of solutions into the hydrologic network [Amis 77].

IV.E. Remediation

Remediation is underway. Cogéma pumped out the water covering the tailings in the open air mine and covered these tailings with residues of lixiviation. As of February 1999, it was recontouring the land [InfoU v-vi.94; Andra 99].

IV.F. Other problems

Le Brugeaud is the site of an old hamlet "that disappeared (expropriation process or good natured agreement, we do not know) . . . The river Gartempe passed across the vein: it was turned from its course for more than 700 meters" [Amis 77].

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