The Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD), Hyderabad has decided to ‘shelve’ the project in the Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR) to prospect for the yellowcake.
Context
The Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD), Hyderabad has decided to ‘shelve’ the project in the Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR) to prospect for the yellowcake.
About the Uranium Project
- In 2019, an expert panel on forests of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had recommended in-principle approval of the exploration of uranium over 83 square kilometers in the tiger reserve.
- The project was supposed to operate over the prospects for the yellowcake in the tiger reserve area.
Yellowcake
- It is also called urania.
- It is a type of uranium concentrate powder that is obtained from leach solutions, as an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores.
- It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fuel fabrication or uranium enrichment.
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- The project was opposed by environmental groups, conservationists, and NGOs.
- Concerns were raised over the threat to the tigers and wildlife, water pollution, damage to the habitation of Chenchutribals.
Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR)
- It was originally part of the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve (NSTR) which is India’s largest tiger reserve.
- After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the ATR falls in Telangana and is the country’s sixth-largest tiger reserve.
- It is part of the Nallamalla forests and is also populated by Adivasis and the Chenchu tribe, who are hunter-gatherers.
- The ATR harbors rich biodiversity of wildlife animals which includes tiger, leopard, dhole, deer, striped hyena, jackal, sambar, nilgai, chowsingha, and sloth bear to name a few.
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