Attack of the Killer Bs: New Life for Old Camps

Very few explorers are doing grassroots exploration for uranium these days. Why should they? There’s no real need.

Uranium was out of fashion for so long that a great many known uranium prospects were available for the taking when the market turned. As a consequence, most of the uranium exploration now taking place is at the advanced economic-evaluation stage, or at least an exercise in confirming old resources.

The historic uranium-producing districts of Canada — the Great Bear Lake, Beaverlodge, Blind River and Bancroft camps — all finished their productive lives with resources left over. Sure enough, those long-neglected resources and prospects are getting another look from a new generation of explorers.

The biggest of the old districts, Elliot Lake in Ontario, saw its mines close after high-priced Ontario Hydro contracts ended in the 1980s. As present-day prices approach the level of those old contract figures, it isn’t surprising to see companies moving back into the area with development plans in their heads.

Notably, both of the serious contenders have pulled former Rio Algom development projects off the shelf, with known resources.

Pele Mountain Resources (GEM-V, PMNHF-O) has moved all the way to mine-planning studies on its property in Joubin and Gunterman Twps., about 11 km east of Elliot Lake. The property covers several historic showings from the 1950s, called the Pardee, St. Mary’s, Stancan, and Calder-Bousquet occurrences, and in 1977, Rio Algom estimated about 30 million tonnes grading 0.047% U3O8 on the property.

A new resource estimate by Pele’s consulting firm. Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle — this one compliant with National Instrument 43-101 — puts a similar figure on the resource, 30.5 million tonnes at 0.05% U3O8, and classes it as inferred. The calculation used a cutoff grade of 0.03% U3O8 and assumed a uranium oxide price of US$70 per lb. Preliminary work on mining costs suggested underground mining would have a cost around US$65 per lb. given a Canadian dollar at US85.

Pele has finished a 22-hole drill program, with most holes in a 600 by 800-metre area where the camp’s principal ore host, the Main Conglomerate, is between the surface and a vertical depth of 200 metres. Pele hopes to bring some of the inferred resources up to the indicated category based on the results of that drilling. Assays should be out some time this month.

Pele also has plans to use down-hole radiometric surveys of Rio Algom’s old drill holes (some of which were drilled using small A-size core), to give estimates of uranium and rare-earth metal content by correlating the radiometric readings with assay results in the drill cores. Early metallurgical tests are under way at Memorial University in St. John’s, Nfld., to test liberation size, and leaching tests are slated for the summer.

Early geotechnical results show the rock is sound enough to allow room-and-pillar mining, and Pele is making initial estimates of economic stope size.

A short distance to the east of Pele’s project, in Joubin and Gaiashk Twps., International Montoro Resources (imt-v, imtff-o) has begun work on its Serpent River property. A 4-km strike length of the contact between the Matinenda Formation’s quartz-pebble conglomerates and quartzites and the Archean basement of gneissic rocks is the target for Montoro.

Again, Rio Algom left behind earlier estimates on the uranium deposits of the Serpent River property, in two paleo-channels in the Matinenda sediments, the Pecors and Whiskey channels. A report for Montoro, also by Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle, notes a 1977 estimate of 18 million tonnes grading 0.036% U3O8, but the consultants were not able to find the old data to confirm it. Of that resource, the consultants said, a “substantial portion” is on Montoro’s Serpent River ground.

Montoro acquired the ground from private exploration companies Precambrian Ventures and Dan Patrie Exploration in January, with an initial $100,000 plus 100,000 shares going to the vendors. Roscoe Postle has recommended a $450,000 drill program including five twin holes to verify old results and a dozen exploration holes to test targets downdip from known mineralization and between previous intersections.

Beaverlodge

In the 1950s-era Beaverlodge uranium camp of northern Saskatchewan, which produced 30,000 tonnes of U3O8 up to 1982, grades are much higher than in Elliot Lake. The geology itself has led some workers to conclude that at least some of the Beaverlodge deposits are exposed versions of the very rich unconformity-type deposits in the Athabasca basin, immediately to the south.

Production ended in the Beaverlodge district in 1982, as uranium oxide prices were sliding down past US$20 per lb.; the mines didn’t run out of uranium, but a lot of ore ceased to be ore.

Uranium City Resources (UCR-V, UCRSF-O) expects to get a resource estimate out of a 35-hole drill program on its East Target prospect, just north of the old Verna mine and about 10 km east of Uranium City. The uranium occurrence was mined by Eldorado Nuclear in the latter stages of production, with about 7,800 tonnes coming out of a small open pit, at an average 0.29% U3O8.

UCR’s surface prospecting showed anomalous radioactivity in a 600-metre-long zone parallel to the known mineralization at the East Target. Drilling during the winter found mineralized intersections along the whole zone. The deepest intersections were 230 metres below surface.

The drilled lengths were highly variable, ranging from a fraction of a metre to one of 7 metres, but typically were between 1 and 2 metres. Pinch-and-swell morphologies were common in the Beaverlodge structures, so the variable widths were no surprise.

Grades were also highly variable, with the highest topping around 0.3% U3O8. Among the better intersections were 4 metres that ran 0.322% U3O8, another 4-metre intersection that graded 0.2%, 6 metres running 0.098%, and 7 metres running 0.102%.

UCR’s Kasner Group stablemate, GLR Resources (GRS-T, GLRAF-O) holds much of the central part of the old Beaverlodge camp, including the Martin Lake, Hanson Bay, Larado, and Nicholson Bay deposits. GLR, however, is concentrating on the Box and Athona gold projects.

Great Bear

Remotest and oldest of the country’s uranium camps is the Great Bear camp, where Gilbert and Charles Labine discovered pitchblende-silver veins in the 1930s. Since last November, Alberta Star Development (ASX-V, ASXSF-O) has been drilling targets on its Contact Lake property, southeast of the Echo Bay and Eldorado mines. The old Contact Lake mine produced 625,000 oz. silver and about 3 tonnes U3O8, out of veins in andesite intruded by the Mystery Lake diorite complex.

If the geology sounds suspiciously like what many explorationists are calling iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) these days, it is not a coincidence. Alberta Star, which is exploring a 350-sq.-km land package in the area, regards the camp as an example of that fashionable deposit type. Most of the rocks show an albite-hematite alteration, typical of the IOCG alteration pattern, and the area sports a 1-km-long string of rusty gossans on the surface.

Magnetic-gradient and radiometric surveys over the area recently revealed a number of new targets for uranium exploration. Regional sampling and mapping are in the works.

A 9-hole drill program on the Eldorado structure itself showed polymetallic copper-zinc-silver mineralization, with local uranium. Among the better intersections were a 5-metre-long zone that graded 0.22% U3O8 and 1.5 metres that graded 0.15% U3O8.

Another Echo Bay-area player is Solitaire Minerals (SLT-V, SREMF-O), which has optioned the old Echo Bay Mines property from Kinross Gold (K-T, KGC-N). Altogether, Solitaire has about 90 sq. km in the area. Magnetic surveying last summer identified a zone of low magnetism coincident with a northeast-striking fault mapped by previous operators and government geologists. Surface grab samples on Myste
ry Island, one of the few land areas in the claim block, returned 0.13% uranium (0.15% U3O8), along with values in copper and cobalt.

Solitaire has an option to earn 100% of the property for exploration expenditures of $5 million over five years. The company issued 1.5 million shares to Kinross on closing, and will have to issue 2.5 million more over the course of the agreement. Kinross keeps a 2% net smelter return, plus a back-in right for 60% of any gold deposit, for which it would have to reimburse Solitaire for two-and-a-half times the amount Solitaire would have spent on exploring the gold resource.

Cooper Minerals (CQ-V, CQPFF-O) has put together a land package of about 400 sq. km in the district, and is conducting regional-scale exploration. A private company, Kiyu Resources, is active as well.

Bancroft

The smallest of the old Canadian uranium camps was the Bancroft district in southeastern Ontario, where late-Proterozoic pegmatites of the Grenville subprovince hosted uraninite and uranothorite mineralization in brecciated zones and on intrusive contacts. Uranium production in the area started in the late 1950s and lasted until 1964, then resumed in 1975 and lasted until 1982. The largest of the mines, Faraday, hoisted 2.3 million tonnes of ore that ran 0.11% U3O8, and the camp produced about 6,700 tonnes of U3O8.

El Nino Ventures (ELN-V, ELNOF-O) and CanAm Uranium (CAUI-O) have the most active program, with $500,000 budgeted for exploration and 1,650 metres of drilling scheduled. The joint venture controls about 40 sq. km of mineral rights in the Bancroft area, parcelled out into eight properties.

Nevada-based CanAm is earning a 60% interest in the properties by funding $1 million worth of work over two years, with $125,000 cash and 275,000 CanAm shares going to El Nino. Another $1.5 million in exploration work and an issue of 300,000 more shares to El Nino will give CanAm an 80% interest.

The two most advanced properties in the package are the Empire B property and the Amalgamated Rare Earth property, both in Monmouth Twp., west of Bancroft, where deposits were drilled off in the 1950s. Empire has about 2 million tonnes grading 0.036% U3O8 in discontinuous pegmatite sills in metamorphic country rock — marbles, felsic gneiss, amphibolite and syenite.

Earlier operators put a shaft down at Amalgamated in the mid-1950s, with about 1.8 km of underground drifts and crosscuts; a contemporary resource estimate put the size of the deposit at 265,000 tonnes averaging 0.075% U3O8.

Melkior Resources (MKR-V, MKRIF-O) and Santoy Resources (SAN-V, SANRF-O), who are already joint-venture partners in the Otish Mountains region of Quebec, hold a 4-sq.-km property in the area. The Henderson occurrences are in five pegmatite dykes; a chip sample in one graded 0.15% U3O8 over 1.8 metres, and grab samples ranged up to 0.65%.