CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut - A government advisory board in Nunavut has recommended against allowing a French company to build a uranium mine that was proposed for the edge of a caribou calving ground.
The Nunavut Impact Review Board has concluded that since Areva's Kiggavik project lacks a definite start date or development schedule, its environmental and social impacts cannot be properly assessed.
The $2.1-billion project called for one underground and four open-pit mines just west of Baker Lake, and would have provided at least 400 jobs, many reserved for local Inuit.
But Areva acknowledged that uranium prices are currently so low it could be up to two decades before construction would actually begin.
Review Board chair Elizabeth Copland says in a statement that Areva may resubmit the proposal when it has more certainty about the start date.
She says the board could then make "more definite and confident" assessments about the effects the mine would have on caribou, fish and other marine life.
