Rosatom unit clears approval for mobile uranium production at Dalmatovskoye field

Rosatom’s mining arm has cleared a key regulatory hurdle at Verkhne-Uksyanskaya, in the Dalmatovskoye uranium field of Russia’s Kurgan Region, setting up the next step in uranium production from a remote deposit that would be expensive to serve with a conventional plant. Rostekhnadzor issued the certificate that confirmed successful construction and installation of the first mobile sorption unit at the site, turning a completed build into a project that is now ready for commissioning.

The unit itself is the point. Operation Unit U-14V is a modular, transportable complex built from containerized equipment, including sorption columns, solution and sorbent tanks, an electrical substation and a control room. The site package also includes nearly 2,000 metres of process pipeline overpasses and utility networks, plus fire-fighting tanks with a combined capacity of 120 cubic metres. Rosatom’s logic is simple: in hard-to-reach deposits, a mobile system can be brought online faster and with lower capital cost than a full stationary installation.

That matters beyond one field in one district. Dalur, Rosatom’s uranium miner in the area, was the first Russian company to use in-situ recovery, or in-situ leaching, for uranium. That method now accounts for more than half of global uranium production, and it has become central to the economics of new supply because it avoids the footprint of conventional open-pit or underground mining in many cases. In a market where fuel security has become a strategic issue, modular ISR-linked infrastructure gives Rosatom a way to keep feedstock flowing from domestic assets without waiting on larger, slower buildouts.

Dinis Ezhurov, Dalur’s chief executive, said the next step is commissioning the production unit so the company can maintain the uranium volumes needed by Russia’s nuclear energy sector while developing difficult terrain responsibly. The timing is telling. Rosatom said the first mobile sorption unit at Verkhne-Uksyanskoye was installed and commissioned on December 27, 2025, and the new approval now formalizes the construction and installation stage behind it.

Dalur’s wider portfolio shows the same pattern. The company began preparing in 2017 to develop the Dobrovolnoye deposit in the Kurgan Region, and first uranium has already been produced there. Earlier reporting also said digital technology was being used to extend the life of Dalmatovskoye by three to five years, while Rosatom’s mining division exceeded its uranium production target by 90 tonnes in 2023. Taken together, the new permit is less a one-off than another move in Rosatom’s longer effort to secure upstream control over future reactor fuel.