In northern Niger, the French multinational Orano, formerly Areva, has closed its first uranium mine after almost 50 years of operation. What will happen to the miners and their families? In Akokan and Arlit, two towns totally dependent on mining activity, two years after the closure, employees and their families feel abandoned by the company and millions of tons of radioactive waste are still stored in the open air. Instead of improving the living conditions of the population of one of the poorest countries on the planet, the uranium mines seem to leave behind a poisonous legacy. The first uranium deposits were discovered by the former French colonial power at the end of the sixties in the Nigerien Sahara. To supply European nuclear power plants, the company Orano created two mines at the time, Somaïr and Cominak.
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The region, which had only a few Tuareg camps, is changing: attracted by the sirens of uranium, tens of thousands of Nigeriens are flocking from all over the country in the hope of finding a job. Attached to each mine, two towns emerge from the ground: Arlit and Akokan. After nearly half a century of exploitation and once the uranium resources have been exhausted, the multinational decides to close the Cominak mine in 2021. It then promises to ensure the retraining of its 1,400 employees and to occupy mountains of radioactive waste resulting from the processing of uranium. Two years later, the town of Akokan, which depended on the activity of the mine, is abandoned, former miners are still unemployed and the populations are worried about the effects of radioactivity on their health. A few kilometers away, the city of Arlit and its 140,000 inhabitants fear to suffer the same fate when the uranium veins of the other Orano mine run out. While some European countries are relaunching their nuclear industry to respond to the current energy crisis, on the other side of the world, the populations of Niger are bearing the full brunt of the consequences of uranium mining.
