Searchlight Resources finds uranium south of the Athabasca Basin

Canadian explorer Searchlight Resources (TSXV: SCLT; US-OTC: CNYCF) is generating renewed interest in grassroots uranium exploration outside the established boundaries of the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan, chairman and VP for corporate development Alf Stewart tells The Northern Miner.

In October, the company announced high-resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric surveys on the company’s Kulyk Lake rare earth element (REE) project that had returned interesting values for uranium and thorium. The development about 165 km north of La Ronge, Saskatchewan, and 65 km south of the former Key Lake uranium mine, prompted a junior staking rush in an area not formerly considered as prospective for high-grade uranium the basin is famous for.

In September 2021, Special Projects Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, completed high-resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric surveys covering about 39 sq. km of the Kulyk Lake claims. The results outlined significant new thorium and uranium targets and several historical REE, uranium and thorium showings, said Stewart.

“Searchlight uses thorium as a pathfinder for REEs in the mineral monazite, which is the principal mineral in the known Kulyk Lake REE showing. The highest thorium value from the radiometric survey (5.3 parts per million) was located over the known Kulyk Lake REE trenches, which yielded historical assays of 56.18% total rare earth oxides (TREO),” said Stewart in an interview.

Additionally, the radiometric survey identified the Kulyk Lake target as part of a larger anomalous thorium zone, at least 3 km in length.

“These are excellent results from the radiometric survey, highlighting the known Kulyk Lake trench area and tying it to a significant multi-kilometre thorium anomaly,” said Stewart. “The uranium results from the radiometric survey were equally positive, identifying a significant new, previously unknown uranium target and pinpointing known uranium showings, including the Eldorado showing with historical assays of 0.785% uranium trioxide (U3O8).”

The newly identified anomalous uranium zone has multiple high values, ranging up to 5.74 ppm, the highest uranium value of the survey.

Follow-up field work is being planned for spring 2022, but the preliminary data gives Stewart the confidence the company is on to something “extraordinary.” Searchlight completed additional staking at Kulyk Lake during July and October, expanding the claim block from 61.1 sq. km to 317.1 sq. km.

“And based on this radiometric survey, we’ve expanded our property to 300 sq. km and are now surrounded by uranium explorers. Purepoint Uranium (TSXV: PTU) to the north, Ross McElroy to the east, Skyharbour Resources (TSXV: SYH), and others are all in the area surrounding us. They’re also looking in the basement because they realize that it can also host extensive deposits,” said Stewart.

“The key question is, how close to the Athabasca basin do you have to be? And my suggestion is maybe people have been sticking too close to the boundaries of the Athabasca Basin, and potentially the basement rocks which are the subject of renewed exploration interest. But deposits could exist anywhere within the Wollaston Lake fold belt, not just right at the fringes and under the Athabasca cover.”

Stewart explained that Searchlight was incorporated on January 21, 2000, as a Nevada corporation and migrated to Canada on May 31, 2013. The company has been involved primarily in the acquisition of its mineral properties and the exploration and development of its U.S.-based mineral properties and subsequently of its Canadian properties.

Through the hawk-eyed surveillance of the Saskatchewan assessment files, company president and CEO Stephen Wallace could stake the Kulyk Lake claims knowing that some of the highest TREO grab sample grades globally were historically found on the property.

“This project has some of the highest-grade rare-earth assays globally at over 50% rare earths and it’s never been drilled,” said Stewart.

The REEs, the uranium and thorium values report to a monazite mineral at Kulik Lake.

According to Stewart, the aeromagnetic and radiometric surveys flown by Special Projects were designed to detect high-grade uranium at the surface. This was the same technique used by the contractor that led to the discovery of high-grade uranium boulders at Fission Uranium’s (TSX: FCU; LSE: 0UW4) flagship Patterson Lake South (PLS) project, which also extended the southwestern margins of the Athabasca Basin.

PLS was discovered because of a Special Projects group boulder survey, which ultimately led to finding the mineralizing structure in the basement. And that led to the discovery of NexGen Energy‘s (TSX: NXE; NYSE: NXE; ASX: NXG) Arrow deposit, which is also on strike with PLS. “It all comes back to surface radiation surveys,” said Stewart.

The data points to Searchlight having a 2 km-long by 500-meter wide area of high-grade surface uranium spikes just off to the southwest from Kulyk Lake. “There is no known uranium occurrence. There’s no drilling, no trenching, nothing. This is a brand-new surface discovery of uranium, and we’re directly measuring radioactivity from uranium. So, it may be aggressive to call it a discovery when we haven’t even been on the ground. But that’s what we’ve got,” said Stewart.

The discovery of PLS resulted from a joint venture between Alpha Minerals and Fission Uranium, which shared the project management on a year-by-year basis. Alpha Minerals is a sister company to Searchlight, with Ben Ainsworth on the board of directors. He won the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Prospector of the Year award jointly with Ross McElroy for the discovery of PLS. He was the chairman of Searchlight Resources until he passed away in 2017.

Stewart said the difference with Kulyk Lake was that the initial discoveries in the Athabasca basin area from the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Rabbit Lake, Midwest Lake, Key Lake, were unconformity deposits. But PLS and the Arrow deposit are not unconformity deposits; their basement structures are in the older crystalline basement under the Athabasca basin.

Perhaps the closest comparable for the emerging Kulyk Lake discovery is the former Eagle Point mine, which was mined for about 20 years and a basement-hosted deposit.

“And we’re just on strike off to the southwest. We’re off the main hunting ground for unconformity deposits. We’re just far enough away that there’s never even been any drilling for uranium or rare earths on our property that we can find in the recorded work,” said Stewart.

“I find that astounding we’re 65 km south of Key Lake uranium mill, conceptually, within trucking distance of a mill. We’re out in this Wollaston domain’s highly metamorphosed metasediments, looking for rare earths, and we stumbled on a major uranium showing at least from our geophysics. And since we’ve found this, we weren’t looking for uranium, but uranium took off sort of in parallel with our survey. And now this looks like the most exciting thing in our portfolio,” he said.

Searchlight owns Kulyk Lake 100% with no royalties.

“What they found with their radiation survey was boulders at the surface, and they had been pushed by a glacier more than 2 km from the structures in the basement. At Kulyk Lake, we see very shallow overburden, more of a typical Canadian Shield style, three to four feet of overburden. The difference between Kulyk Lake and PLS is the overburden around Patterson Lake is 50 meters thick. And the actual strongest anomaly is along a ridge, which is 50 meters high and a big rocky hill in Saskatchewan. I don’t think we’re going to be tracing boulders. We think we’re trying to probably find some high-grade vein in situ at the surface,” said Stewart.

While uranium generates more interest, Kulyk Lake’s rare earth potential is also significant. “We’ve also found a potential 3-km-long thorium anomaly that must be prospected. The showings contain neodymium and praseodymium, and a little bit of dysprosium. Those are the elements used in regenerative braking systems in electric vehicles. So, we have a double-barrelled opportunity at Kulyk Lake for both rare earths and uranium,” said Stewart.

“We’re formulating our plans right now. We’re going to have boots on the ground as early in the season as practical — as soon as the ground is sufficiently dry and snow-free — probably mid-April to the latest mid-May. And we’ll be generating news,” said Stewart.