Ross McElroy is the President, COO and Head Geologist for Fission Uranium Corp. (TSX: V.FCU, Stock Forum) - a new uranium explorer recently spun out Fission Energy Corp. The company has a new, major discovery in Canada’s Athabasca Basin as well as a selection of other highly prospective properties in the Athabasca and in the Macusani district of Peru. With his first years as a geologist spent with the Majors including Areva, Cameco and BHP, Ross McElroy moved over to the junior exploration sector in 2003 and has specialized in exploration ever since. 
Q: You had a successful career with the majors before joining Fission Energy. What led you to enter the junior resource sector?
Ross McElroy: The Majors are a fantastic place for a professional geologist, make no mistake. The amount of money and time invested in training and the quality of projects and exploration methods used – well you just don’t get that anywhere else. From the first steps of exploration through to full production – you can learn and hone your skills in all aspects. The Majors also help you to build a great network of highly trained professionals. The team I have now, most of these are the people I worked there with, and I have been in a position to bring over. They are the cream of the crop.
Why did I leave? I moved on to be a part of something, to build a team I could stay with, to use my skill set to maximum effect. My great love is exploration and while the mine construction and production experience I gained with the Majors has played a huge part in my success as an explorer, I wanted to focus on the sharp end of exploration while also heading up the technical direction of the company and of sharing in the results of discoveries. It’s just not possible to pursue all three of those ambitions when you’re with the Majors. When you look at Fission Uranium Corp – we have the technical skills and experience of the majors but we are nimble enough to act like a junior. We are front line explorers and that’s what I find so rewarding.
Q: With your knowledge of the majors and juniors, what do you think mineral exploration companies should be doing in these market conditions?
Ross McElroy: I think juniors have to remember that if they are going to invest the amount of time, effort and money in exploring a property, they need to have their end game in mind before they take a single step. My end game, the end game of Fission Uranium Corp., is based on understanding where the majors want to be. We explore, we identify and we expand on discoveries. We then sell to a major or mid-tier. I don’t have to convince a major to buy a discovery in the Athabasca – they know already it makes sense, which is why they are there in big way. Know your end game. Be where the majors are.
Q: You’ve made a name for yourself in the uranium sector, with a particular track record in the AthabascaBasin. What is it about uranium and the Athabasca that interests you so much?
Ross McElroy: Well naturally I’m also a huge believer in uranium as a commodity. I wouldn’t explore for a resource that I didn’t value. If you believe in the need for clean energy then you really have to believe in nuclear energy and that means uranium. The massive nuclear build out going on not just in China, Russia and India but worldwide – governments understand the realities of meeting energy demand while weaning the world off fossil fuels.
Why the Athabasca? The thing I really like is the challenge. The uranium deposits in the Athabasca are the highest grades in the world but they are also the toughest to find anywhere. Uranium deposits are not rare. World-wide there are plenty of deposits, but typically the grades are very, very low. The Athabasca deposits are the Formula One of uranium grades but are incredibly difficult to find. It’s the greatest challenge and the greatest reward when you find them. It’s amazing really. Like finding pirate treasure chest of gold. There’s nothing else like it.
There’s also my background I guess. I fell in love with the Athabasca region and the uranium sector early in my career. I got my first break there as part of the small team that made the McArthur River discovery, the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposit. I also work on the original discovery of what has become the Shea Creek deposits on the underexplored western side of the Athabasca Basin. Both McArthur River and Shea Creek are simply massive deposits. Focusing again on the Athabasca for me was kind of like coming home.
Q: Fission Uranium has been making big waves with its major new uranium discovery at PLS. Since Fission is the operator, what can you tell us about it in your capacity as Chief Geologist?
Ross McElroy: The early stage success we have had is as good as anything I’ve ever seen in my years exploring the Athabasca. Some of the intersections we’ve hit are just phenomenal – they are up there with the best that anyone has ever encountered exploring the Basin and my belief is that there are more to come because results are showing we are looking at a very robust system.
It also interesting because it broke conventional wisdom in a couple of ways. The western side of the Athabasca Basin region is a relatively underexplored area of the Athabasca – people have tended to shun the west side, focusing instead on the east side where all of Canada’s current production comes from. Though as you can imagine that’s changing pretty quickly now! I’m a bit of a contrarian by nature and realized quickly that the western side of the basin should be equally as prolific as the eastern side. Furthermore, people have assumed all the shallow deposits have already been found, and thus have focused their efforts on deeper, more challenging exploration targets. I don’t believe in a dogmatic approach to exploration – you’re not going to be successful that way.
So PLS is on the far edge of the Athabasca Basin and is one of those early stage discoveries that went from concept to discovery very fast. We had very little historical info on the area because aside from being in an area that uranium explorers had largely ignored. The land itself was originally restricted – reserved for coal exploration, not the uranium mineral sector. We had to convince the government to open it up to uranium exploration. Once they opened it to the uranium industry, we staked a large strategic land position.
First we flew a low level, highly sensitive radiometric aerial survey, which basically delivered the same sensitivity as ground prospecting but naturally over a much larger area and we found some anomalies. In the summer of 2011, I then sent in my ground geo team to follow up these anomalies and we found high grade uranium boulders on day one. We felt the source of the boulders was close and so we staked a land position to cover the most prospective source location and went about our exploration business. The next year was spent using geophysics to get a solid picture on the up-ice bedrock geology where we felt the boulders were source from.
This is what led to the discovery, through drilling, of high grade uranium in bedrock in November of 2012. In the winter of 2013, thinking outside the box, we conducted a radon survey beneath the frozen lake on trend of our original discovery. Radon is a gas that is given off by uranium and radon surveys can detect this. Because radon is so mobile, radon surveys are plagued with a lot of false anomalous readings and the source is hard to nail down. Our survey was a bit different than the conventional method used to obtain measurements…we lowered a sampler into the water under the ice – tested samples on both the lake bottom and the water directly above.
We identified distinct radon anomalies, which we drilled and ended up discovering super-high grade uranium mineralization. The combination of a lot of hard technical work and the active support of our CEO, Dev Randhawa, who has been so vital in driving the company forward, has been our route to success. As our results have shown its all come together.
Q: What are your plans for PLS this year? What can we expect from your team?
Ross McElroy: Drilling. A lot of drilling. The winter program was incredible – great results and plenty of data to point us in the right directions. To parse what one mining analyst stated, our winter program at PLS is possibly the most successful exploration program in the history of the Athabasca Basin. That to me is a pretty solid ringing endorsement. We’ll be announcing details of our summer drilling in May. We’re planning on a very aggressive program in late June and July. We’ll move some barge platforms onto the lake and will be operating three rigs simultaneously. I’m anticipating a program in the region of 12,000 meters and we’ll also be running more radon surveys on rest of property. I expect us to be very busy.
Disclosure: Fission Uranium is a Stockhouse client.