Drilling has just started on the controversial Angela uranium site 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

Some Alice Springs residents are concerned about exploration activity occurring in close proximity to the town.

Cameco was awarded the exploration license late last year but has just got the governmental go ahead to start the drilling program.

Stephan Stander project manager of Angela project for Cameco in Alice Springs says they've started RC drilling the first section of the region.

"(This) is the pre-coring portion of the first hole. This portion of drilling will probably go down 300 metres where we will switch over to diamond drilling to complete the hole, to the mineralised core."

In foreground of the drill site there's a number of white bags.

"Each contains three kilograms of a representative sample from each metre of RC drilling. We use that to log it, to see what's in the hole. We also send that away for analysis."

In the drilling process, lots of very fine material is also produced.

"The sieve is used to to sieve out that very fine material so that you're only left with the core of the rock fragment so you can actually identify the rock types.

"This is a portion of the hole that doesn't contain any mineralisation (uranium). So what we'd do is we would take 50 to 100 grams of chips and store it in a chip tray and store it for record purposes."

Mr Stander says they know where the uranium is thanks to past drilling in the 1970s and he doesn't expect to hit any uranium on day one of the drill.

"If one of these RC rigs starts getting up to full capacity, we should, in a 12 hour shift do at least 200 metres of drilling. So to get down to completing the hole would take at least two days.

"We're expecting to have in excess of 0.1 per cent of U308 over the mineralised zone."

General manager from Gorey and Cole drillers, Craig Oldfield was also at the site overseeing the first day of the drill.

"We're drilling reverse circulation at the moment. (That's) where all the sample comes up the drill string and then forced down the outside. That way you get an uncontaminated sample and get a better sample."

Despite the amount of wind at the site, Mr Oldfield is confident his company will keep the amount of dust down.

"There's probably more dust created from cars...than the drill hole. We keep that to an absolute minimum and that seems to be working alright."

So is working at the site safe?

"We've got rigs down at Roxby Downs in South Australia and at Ranger mine up at Jabiru and we've been involved in the uranium industry, drilling wise for probably about seven years. Everything's closely monitored and regulated and I haven't got any issues with it and none of the staff have...I'm comfortable with it."

Mr Oldfield says once they get to uranium they'll use a different method of extracting it.

"Once we hit the ore body, we'll start coring. That will all be done with water and mud, so there won't be any dust at all in that area."

Exploration is expected to last seven months.

In this report: Stephan Stander, project manager of Angela project for Cameco
Craig Oldfield, general manager from Gorey and Cole drillers