Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining\u00a0said on Tuesday it would cooperate with authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo after radiation\u00a0was detected\u00a0in a shipment of cobalt from its mine in the country, and had recalled it.<\/p>\n
The company said above-normal radiation levels were detected on a cobalt consignment during a routine customs inspection in Botswana, even though the shipment had been tested prior to being exported.<\/p>\n
Congolese authorities suspended the operating licence of Zijin’s COMMUS mine over the\u00a0incident, which is being investigated. The miner said the shipment had been issued with a radiation detection qualification report by Congo’s General Commission for Atomic Energy (CGEA).<\/p>\n
While the cobalt hydroxide passed the qualified testing of a third-country radiation protection agency during transportation, authorities in Botswana detected the above-normal radiation levels, the company said.<\/p>\n
Some Congo producers transport cobalt by road via Zambia and Botswana to be exported via Namibia’s port of Walvis Bay.<\/p>\n
“During customs clearance testing in Botswana, there was a suspected radiation exceedance issue,” Zijin said.<\/p>\n
“We will cooperate with the government joint working group to investigate the root cause as soon as possible, take appropriate measures, and ensure product compliance.”<\/p>\n
Zijin owns a 72% stake in the COMMUS copper and cobalt mine, and the remainder is owned by Congo state miner, Gecamines.<\/p>\n
COMMUS, based near Congo’s southern city of Kolwezi, produced 129,000 tonnes of copper and about 2,200 tons of cobalt last year.<\/p>\n
Zijin said it had notified Congolese authorities of the higher levels of radiation and initiated the recall of the shipment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining\u00a0said on Tuesday it would cooperate with authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo after radiation\u00a0was detected\u00a0in a shipment of cobalt from its mine in the country, and had recalled it. The company said above-normal radiation levels were detected on a cobalt consignment during a routine customs inspection in Botswana, even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":13,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,32],"tags":[212,72,2384],"class_list":["post-11567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-economy","tag-botswana","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-zijin-mining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}