Guinea. Economic analysis

First uranium works were carried out in 1958 by French geologists near Gaoual-Kundara, where conglomerates of rhyolite shingle were explored. In 1961 a Hungarian prospecting group detected minor radioactive anomalies near Cape Zerga. In 1974-1975 Japanese geologists conducted a thorough research in central and eastern Guinea. They discovered a high number of promising zones in Tuge, Dinguiraye, Dabola, Kankan, Beyla and N'Zerekore regions. In 1977 a consortium of COGEMA (France), PKK (Japan) and AGIP (Italy) used the Japanese research experience as a background in their assessment works on 18 anomalies of the north, near the Guinea-Mali border. All in all, they drilled 12 thousand running meters of wells. Until 1980, no workable deposits were found. In 1980, however, air geophysical investigation conducted by West-German company GEOSURVEY INTER discovered two large radiometric anomalies: Firava (Kisidougou region) and Damaro (Kerouane-Beyla region). The first terrestrial studies were quite reassuring: uranium occurrences in the zones of big fractures and mylonites along them are related to Archean and Proterozoic metamorphic complexes. They may turn out commercially interesting, just as it happened in similar cases with a number of deposits in America, Namibia, East Germany and Greenland.

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