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About 550 temporary pink slips are now permanent after Cameo Corp. announced plans to indefinitely suspend production at two of its temporarily shuttered uranium facilities in northern Saskatchewan.

Another 150 people working at the Saskatoon-based uranium miner’s head office are expected to lose their jobs in the coming days, Cameco announced late Wednesday afternoon.

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The cuts, which leave Cameco with a single operating mine in Saskatchewan, are what Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel described as another “tough decision” in response to persistently weak uranium prices.

“We don’t know today, and we don’t want to speculate (on when the operations will restart), because we don’t want to put any false hope out. It could be a significant period of time,” Gitzel said.

Late last year, Postmedia News reported that the Saskatoon-based uranium miner planned to shut down its McArthur River mine and Key Lake mill for 10 months beginning in early 2018.