Pele Hires Denison Mine G.M. for U3O8 Mine
Pele Hires Denison Mine G.M. for U3O8 Mine.........Nice!
Fergus Kerr, P. Eng., has more than 35 years of mining industry experience, including over 14 years working as Mine Superintendent, Manager of Mining, and General Manager for Denison Mines Limited, during the time Elliot Lake was a producing mining camp.
Pele Mountain has retained the services of Fergus Kerr, P. Eng., as a technical and operations consultant to assist the Company with the development of its Elliot Lake Uranium Project. This is a significant development for the company and I think very well may reflect the direction that Pele will be taking in relation to the uranium extraction methods they will employ at the Pele Uranium Mine.
Denison Mines Corp. operated three mines in the Elliot lake uranium camp. They had maintained a limited underground Bacterial Leaching Program since the mid 60's. In 1980 to lower mining costs Denison initiated a research program to Expand Production from Bacterial Leaching. They were successful in breeding stronger more active bacteria which were less sensitive to cold temperatures and increased Bacterial Leach Production up to 20% of total production.
They employed a few Bacterial Leach Methods....
---Flood Stope Bacterial Leach
---Flood Stope Bacterial Leach with Oxygen Acceleration
---Mined Stope Sprayed Heap Bacterial Leach
The interesting side note here is the fact that 83% of the material for the Bacterial Leach Program Denison ran came from the low-grade mineralization in the Hangingwall. The remainig 13% came from pillar recovery and mine H2O. Pele's 43-101 does not include that portion of the Hangingwall in the 43-101 Resource at all but does go on to say that there is the potential to increase the Resource to include the Hangingwall material if it can be exploited with an underground leaching operation. Nice!
Denison also built a plant in 1986 to extract Yttrium, a Rare Earth, as a by-product from uranium production. The Ion Exchange barren Solution generated in the uranium processing plant was utilized as feedstock for the Yttrium Recovery Plant. Kerr should have Rare Earth extraction experience as well. Seeing as though the main conglomerate bed grades 0.141% total REO thats a requirement. Nice!
In 1977 Ker Addison Mines developed an Elliot Lake-type deposit 70 kms. to the east that used only leaching methods. 30% of the broken material was brought to surface and processed using Surface Heap Leach and the remaining 70% of the broken ore was left in the underground stope for processing by underground leaching methods.
Will Pele choose to forego the use of a mill and just extract the uranium by leaching is a question that will be answered in the future. But it is only one option out of many different scenarios that ultimately will be decided by the numbers.
Finding help developing the right cold-resistant bacteria will be easy........heres a link. I have forwarded the article to Mr. Shefsky as well.
https://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392889
They are working on answering these questions and are advancing this project at a very fast pace........with the addition of Fergus Kerr,P.Eng., the answers may come more easily for us.
Once Again.......Good Job Pele. I await the next few News Releases in the next short while.
This story is getting more & more interesting........
Heres the updated PowerPoint....... https://pelemountain.com/pdfs/Pele_presentation.pdf
Good Luck Longs.