* Shares soaring on drill results since November * Gains are in sharp contrast to most of industry * Uranium prices depressed since Japanese disaster * Alpha led by part of Hathor Exploration team By Rod Nickel TORONTO, March 4 (Reuters) - The last uranium company BenAinsworth worked for, Hathor Exploration, became the target of abidding war that mining giant Rio Tinto PLC eventuallywon, and the geologist-turned mining executive thinks he mayhave struck it rich again. Ainsworth is now chief executive of Alpha Minerals Inc, a junior miner that has a closely watched joint ventureproject with Fission Energy Corp in Western Canada'suranium-rich Athabasca basin. The companies are in the early stages of exploring theirdeposit at Patterson Lake South, but drill hole results inNovember and again in February sent Alpha's stock on a tear.Shares of the Vancouver-based company have multiplied in valueeight times since Nov. 5. It has also raised C$9 million ($8.7million) in private placements and exercised stock warrants,funding it into early 2014. Alpha's gains stand in sharp contrast to declines among manyuranium stocks, such as Cameco Corp, the world'slargest listed uranium producer, due to soft prices followingJapan's Fukushima disaster two years ago. Despite thoseconditions, and pressures on the global mining sector ingeneral, investors can still get excited about uranium given acompelling reason, Ainsworth said. Alpha was known as ESO Uranium Corp until Nov. 2, when itconsolidated shares in the renamed company, Alpha. The tightshare structure also contributed to the price spike. "There definitely was a great response," Ainsworth said."It's really helpful to have some momentum going forward afteryou've completed the (share) rollback and come back trading." Results at five drill holes of relatively shallow depth,suggested to some that Alpha's flagship project Patterson LakeSouth could become Athabasca's next high-grade uranium deposit.The work is so preliminary, however, that Alpha and Fission donot yet have a legally defined resource. "The grades and the thicknesses become very significant,especially when you put it at fairly shallow depth," Ainsworthsaid, adding that means less digging for a potential open pitmine. The results showed an attractive deposit at Patterson asshallow as 50 metres below the surface. Hathor's Roughriderdeposit is five times as deep. Alpha and Fission were initially partners on exploring aproperty further north when their geophysics contractorsuggested the deposit may be bigger than they thought. "We started to find the information for the south (property)looking a heck of a lot more interesting," Ainsworth said. Ainsworth, a geologist and engineer, was vice-president ofexploration at Hathor Exploration, which developed theRoughrider uranium deposit in the basin before selling thecompany last year to Rio Tinto, who outbid Cameco. He laterbrought along Michael Gunning, Hathor's former CEO, as Alpha'schairman. "That certainly added to our ability to run up the oldHathor flag and say, 'look, we've got parts of the Hathor teamhere and we may be able to do something like that.'" Fission, which is being acquired by Denison Mines Corp pending a shareholder vote, is preparing for PattersonLake South a 43-101, an instrument to publicly discloseinformation about Canadian mineral properties. The takeover doesnot include Fission's half interest in Patterson Lake South,which will be owned by a newly formed company. A producing mine at Patterson could be less than a decadeaway, Ainsworth said, subject to a preliminary economicassessment, feasibility studies and permit approvals. "Fortunately we are in one of the best parts of the worldpolitically, and geologically it's a super part of the world. "This is where the highest-grade mines in the world are." The world's biggest mining convention, held by theProspectors & Developers Association of Canada, takes placethis week in Toronto.