Talvivaara Mining, the Finland focused nickel and zinc miner, has won European Union approval to sell uranium to Canadian uranium firm Cameco Corporation.
The approval is the first step in Talvivaara completing the "uranium permitting process".
Before production can go ahead there are several more hoops to jump through, including Environmental Permit approval and a licence from the Finnish Government to extract uranium as a by-product.
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Talvivaara owns a huge nickel mine in Sotkamo, central Finland, considered one of the biggest deposits of sulphide nickel in Europe. It's from the ore produced at Sotkamo that the firm intends to extract uranium.
The company says it expects decisions on the next stages of its applications to be complete by the middle of 2012.
Talvivaara's Chief Executive Pekka Pera said of the EU's decision: "We are delighted by the news that our contract with Cameco for the off-take of uranium was approved by the ESA. We have successfully reached the first milestone in the permitting process and we remain confident that, with final approvals over the coming period, we will soon be able to deliver further value from our ore at Talvivaara through uranium by-product extraction."
BS
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