Fission and Alpha emerge as newest players in Athabasca

The discovery of a high-grade uranium-bearing boulder field just south of the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan is shaping into a big find for joint-venture partners Fission Energy (FIS-V) and Alpha Minerals (AMW-V).

Initial tests on boulders at the Patterson Lake South (PLS) property returned up to 40% uranium oxide (U3O8), and drilling since then continues to impress, with the latest round of results identifying a third mineralization zone 780 metres east of the original discovery, the R00E zone.

This means that the joint venture has found three separate uranium-mineralized zones that are all along strike, and remain open along strike and width.

The discovery hole on the third zone intersected a band of weak-to-moderate mineralization over 22 metres from a depth of 155 metres. This initial intersection led the companies to do a stepout hole 15 metres south, which hit three intervals of weak-to-strong uranium mineralization 5 metres, 5.5 metres and 11 metres wide between 109 metres and 176.5 metres downhole, including two intervals — 0.1 metre and 0.8 metre wide — of off-scale (greater than 9,999 counts per second) radioactivity in the two lower zones.

The new zone sits 390 metres east of the R390E zone, which has previously returned 11.7-metre highlights of off-scale radioactivity in 57.5 metres of mineralization and 13.9 metres of off-scale in 53 metres of mineralization. The R390E results were released only a week earlier on March 11, and a day after the news of the third zone was released, the companies released stepout results from the R00E zone.

The latest installment in the rapid succession of news flow showed that R00E was growing in size, as 10 additional stepout drill holes hit anomalous radioactivity. Eight of the holes intersecting significant mineralization, including 6 holes intersecting off-scale radioactivity.

Highlights included 31.5 metres of weak-to-strong mineralization with 6 metres of off-scale radioactivity, 26.5 metres of weak-to-strong mineralization with 4.6 metres of off-scale radioactivity and 19 metres of weak-to-strong mineralization with 4.2 metres of off-scale.

The results came out of three different holes, with mineralization beginning at a depth of 62 metres.

The R00E zone has returned previous highlights of 18 metres grading 1.78% U3O8 and 8.5 metres grading 1.05% U3O8. The zone has a strike length of 80 metres and is 50 metres wide.

Fission says uranium mineralization at R00E is focused across a steeply south-dipping package of pelitic gneiss, sandwiched between a semi-pelitic rock to the north and a quartz-feldspar gneiss to the south.

Mineralization also crosses lithological boundaries into the footwall and hangingwall adjacent to the pelitic gneiss. The conductive lithologic package appears to be parallel along strike to the basement electromagnetic conductor that was identified from airborne and ground geophysical surveys.

In January Fission sold its 60% stake in the Waterbury Lake project — along with all its properties in the Eastern Athabasca, Namibia and Dieter Lake in Quebec — to Denison Mines (DML-T, DNN-X). The deal means that Fission shareholders are getting 0.355 of a Denison share for each Fission share, plus a share in a new company that contains the company’s 50% stake in the PLS property. The new company will also retain $15 million in cash, as well as Fission’s management and exploration team.

Fission shares have climbed 90% since the company announced the Denison deal and they traded for $1.04 on March 20.
Fission and Alpha’s recent exploration success is unfolding against a backdrop of pressure to allow more foreign ownership of Canadian uranium mines.

Rio Tinto (RIO-N, RIO-L) and AREVA, with the support of the Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador governments, are pressuring the federal government to update what they call a Cold War-era policy. Canada currently doesn’t allow a foreign owner to take more than a 49% stake in any uranium mine. The restrictions came into being in 1970, and were intended to impede nuclear weapons proliferation.