RE: Is .01% Good
In the way of providing some comparables, start with Cameco’s McArthur River deposit in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin. Costs to mine here are considerable: the deposit is deep, at 550 meters, and involves underground mining. Furthermore, the mine has to be frozen to stop water from flowing into the drifts, and the ore has to be mined by remote control because of the radiation associated with the high-grade ore. But these expenses are more than made up for by the extreme value of McArthur’s unusually high-grade uranium; with 436.5 million pounds at an average grade of 24.7% U3O8, the deposit has an in-situ value of roughly US$10 billion.