Germany
Significant uranium deposits and mining were restricted to eastern Germany (until 1990 German Democratic Republic/GDR) while only few small uranium deposits have been mined in western Germany.
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neburger Erzfeld (ore field) in Thuringia (black-shale stockwork type), which produced about 45% of total GDR uranium production, Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), Saxony (vein type, ca 40% of total production), Königstein, Saxony (sandstone type, 8% of total production), and Culmitzsch-Sorge-Gauern, Thuringia (sandstone-shale, 5% of total production).
Other areas including Freital (coal type), Saxony, delivered the remaining 2% of total GDR production (see Subsect. Historical Review, p. 337, for more information).
Most ore was treated in two hydrometallurgical facilities. Crossen, near Zwickau in Saxony, operated from 1950 through 1989 (capacity 2.5 mio t ore yr–1) and produced 135 000 t U from 74 mio t ore mined in the Erzgebirge and other areas. Seeling städt, south of Gera in Thuringia, was active from 1960 to 1991 (capacity 4.6 mio t ore yr–1) during which time ca. 95 000 t U were extracted from 109 mio t mainly from black-shale ore at grades ranging from 0.07 to 0.1% U. After 1989, the Seelingstädt mill only treated slurry from the Königstein Mine (block leaching). All uranium activities in the former German Democratic Republic were vested in the state-owned SDAG Wismut. Deposits mined in western Germany were located in northeastern Bayern (Bavaria state), Schwarzwald (Black Forest) in Baden-Württemberg state, and in Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) state. A test mill at Ellweiler in RheinlandPfalz provided for uranium processing. Sources of information. Papers published on ore deposits in the former German Democratic Republic prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, e.g., Baumann (1967, 1968), Harlass and Schützel (1965), Kuschka (1972a,b), Leutwein (1957), Vinogradov et al. (1958), and others, contain only limited information on uranium mineralization and deposit dimensions, commonly in context within overall presentations of ore deposits in Saxony and Thuringia. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, a number of publications on uranium districts and deposits in eastern Germany became available, most notably a comprehensive volume by Wismut (1999, 2002) with detailed account of uranium deposits, mining, milling, and other uranium-related activities in the former German Democratic Republic. This volume combined with publications by other authors listed in the text was large ly used for descriptions herein of uranium deposits in eastern Germany. Literature on uranium deposits in western Germany are given at the front of respective chapters.
# Table 7.1. Eastern Germany, principal geologic characteristics and resource ranges of deposit types (n equals 1 to 9). (After Richter and Mühlstedt 1992)
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 F.J. Dahlkamp, Uranium Deposits of the World, DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-78554-5_7
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Germany
# Fig. 7.1. Germany, location of uranium districts and deposits
Historical Review Uranium minerals had been noticed by miners in vein deposits of the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) in southern Saxony and northern Bohemia since Medieval time, i.e., prior to thei
