The regional director of Cameco says drilling at a uranium deposit south of Alice Springs will not produce any dust.

The company and joint venture partner, Paladin, has an exploration licence for the Angela and Pamela site 25 kilometres south of the town.

Cameco must wait for an Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority certificate and Government approval of its mining management plan before it can begin its drilling program.

Regional director Jennifer Parks says a dust-free method called core drilling will be used when exploration work begins later this year.

"It's a method that involves using water to keep the bit cool and you get long cylindrical tubes of rock coming out of the ground rather than grinding it all up and blasting it out with air which creates dust - which we would suppress anyway, but core drilling just totally gets around the problem," she said.

Environmental monitoring has already begun at the site.

Ms Parks says the monitoring programs must be in place before major work can begin.

"We've taken samples from some of the old bore holes in the licence area and they've been sent off for analysis so we can work out the background concentrations of the various elements, including uranium that are currently in the water there, and we've set up all the monitoring equipment for dust monitoring," she said.