By: OrePulse

Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has been given permission to begin drilling test wells at a uranium project in Namibia's Omaheke Region, after the International Atomic Energy Agency approved the extraction method the company proposed to use, Rosatom's chief executive said.

Alexei Likhachev, Rosatom's director general, said on October 30, 2026, at the Russia-Africa summit that the company had received the go-ahead for test drilling at its Wings project near Leonardville, following the IAEA's sign-off on Rosatom's proposed in-situ leaching method. In-situ leaching extracts uranium by circulating chemical solutions through underground ore-bearing rock and pumping the dissolved uranium to the surface, a different process from conventional open-pit mining.

The IAEA is the United Nations agency that reviews member states' proposed nuclear and uranium-extraction methods for safety and technical soundness, among its broader mandate on the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

Namibia's environmental assessment portal lists the Wings pilot uranium-recovery application as under review. The project remains at the pre-feasibility stage and depends on further approvals from Namibian authorities, according to the available information.

The Wings project has drawn scrutiny over its possible effects on the Stampriet aquifer system, a transboundary groundwater source spanning Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. Namibia's government has sought technical assistance from the IAEA to help assess the project's potential environmental impact.

Rosatom's Namibian subsidiary, Headspring Investments, has previously drilled hundreds of boreholes under existing environmental clearance certificates, though those approvals do not cover the pilot-scale chemical recovery of uranium that in-situ leaching involves, according to the available reporting.

Rosatom has a wider set of activities across the African continent, including supplying enriched uranium to South Africa's market, a project in Tanzania, energy ventures in Mali, nuclear power units under construction in Egypt, and partnerships it has said it is exploring with Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zambia.

The IAEA's approval of the proposed extraction method was described by Likhachev as the regulatory step that opened the way for test drilling to proceed at Wings.

A project at the pre-feasibility stage has not yet completed the technical and economic studies needed to support a final investment decision, and Wings still requires a series of additional approvals from Namibian authorities before any move toward full-scale development, according to the available information. That sequence of approvals, Likhachev's remarks suggest, now begins with the test-well drilling the IAEA sign-off has cleared the way for.

Clarification from Namibian authorities on the scope of the permission Likhachev described for the Wings project was still awaited as of this report.