Wismut (mining Company) - History

History

The Erzgebirge Mountains in southern East Germany at the border to the Czech Republic are closely connected to the history of uranium. The metal was discovered in a sample from a silver mine in the mountain range, uranium was produced as a by-product since the early 19th century and as a main product from the 1890s on. The Curies used tailings of a Czech uranium mine in the mountains to discover the Radium and Polonium and radioactive waters were used in several towns for health treatment. After World War II, the Soviet Union became interested in the East German uranium occurrences as a source for its nuclear weapons program. They discovered significant resources and started mining in 1946. In 1947 the Soviet stock company "Wismut" (SAG Wismut, named after the German word for the metal bismuth) was formed. In the following years the company became the most important source for uranium for the Soviet Union and several tens of thousands of people were employed. Safety and environmental standards were very low leading to the exposure of many thousands of workers to dangerous levels of radon and quartz dust leading to lung cancer and silicosis. At the end of 1953 the company was liquidated and the Soviet-German stock company Wismut (SDAG Wismut) was newly founded with the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic owning 50% each. Working and technological standards improved significantly in the following years. Uranium exploration and mining concentrated in the first years after World War II on the old mining areas of the Erzgebirge and adjacent Vogtland Mountains. Many uranium occurrences have been known there for a long time and often were already accessible by old adits and shafts from silver and base metal mining of former centuries. In 1950 the giant ore deposit of Ronneburg and the medium sized Culmitzsch deposit (both in eastern Thuringia) were discovered and in 1965 the deposit Königstein in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. The uranium production of the Wismut had its peak from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s reaching nearly 7,000 tonnes of uranium per year. After that it declined to 3,500 tonnes of uranium in the last normal production year 1989. Through the political and economical changes in East Germany and the following reunification of Germany uranium mining was stopped in December 1990. The Federal Government of Germany took over the ownership of the East German and Soviet stocks of the company and transformed it into the Wismut GmbH in 1991. This new company is responsible for recultivating the former mining and milling sites the government approved a total budget of around 6.4 billion Euro, but much higher costs are calculated even by members of the government. This activity includes securing / filling of underground cavities, covering of dumps and tailings, treatment of mine water and removal / decontamination of the buildings at the mine and milling sites. The recultivation program got 2011 extended till the year 2022.