Cameco announced Wednesday that 845 workers will be temporarily laid off by the end of January.
The affected employees will be from the company's McArthur River mining and Key Lake milling operations in northern Saskatchewan.
"With the continued state of oversupply in the uranium market and no expectation of change on the immediate horizon, it does not make economic sense for us to continue producing at McArthur River and Key Lake when we are holding a large inventory, or paying dividends out of proportion with our earnings," said Tim Gitzel, Cameco's president and CEO, in a news release posted on the company's website.
About 210 workers will be retained to maintain the facilities during shutdown. There's no word when the workers will return to McArthur River and Key Lake.
Cameco says uranium prices have fallen by more than 70 per cent since the Fukushima accident in March 2011 and remain at unsustainably low levels.
