PamplonaTrader wrote: PER DOUG BEATTIE:
"Finally wrapping up that project some of you know I have been working on lately, so I will PM my thoughts on FCU's PEA finally. (The horse has well and truly left the barn mind you and the smart money is well aware of below). But in a nutshell-
Mill capex- about $400M loo low.
Dyke- about $250 M too low.
Tailings facility- as illustrated, this will not get CNSC approval. Add $150 M for subsurface tailings management facility.
Water treatment plant- about $50M too low.
Unit rates for developing a meter of tunnel (drifts or crosscuts as we call them) is around $5,000/m by contractor, not the $2,500/m used. Add about $100 M for this.
The mill production rate is impractical and needs to be smoothed out from a sales perspective. You can't push that quantity of U on the market all at once then shut the taps off if you want to utilize long term contracting to get a premium. The production schedule is shown as is in order to front end the revenue to make the financial model look good. No other reason."
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ALSO PER DOUG BEATTIE:
"This [building steel cofferdams] was hugely expensive but the lateral extent of the ore was minimal and the grade was high. Nevertheless, although the cofferdams worked as planned we did not expect groundwater from the shoreline side to come rushing into the pit. The major problem with groundwater in the pit is that it has to be considered to be contaminated and must be sent to a water treatment plant for radium removal in particular. This could lead the the requirement for a huge treatment plant hence high capital cost. Literally the last bench of the A Zone Pit was mined by backhoe from the upper bench since pit bottom was constantly flooded.
The other key example out there of dam building to allow mining is of course the Diavik diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The key issue with simply tossing rocks in a lake to make a dam is the fact that the water will flow under the dam through the sediments and this water will then require treatment since it is now in the pit. Water treatment was the nail in the coffin of Areva’s Midwest Lake pit proposal based upon those I talked to.
So I suspect the dams at Paterson Lake will need to include a frozen core achieved through drilling vertical holes through the core of the dam into the basement rock and using a freeze plant and thermosiphons to create an impermeable core. The rock core is replaced by slurry wall prior to drilling and freezing. Doable but likely $200-$300M required before all is said and done.
...
when we mined to within 50 metres of the lake bottom (sediment/basement contact) all sorts of interesting things would happen (caving ground, virtual rain storms, etc) . So if Fission were to mine this mineralization from underground, it would be necessary, in my opinion, to leave a 50 metre crown pillar of basement rock above the mine workings. This would sterilize a large portion of the mineralization found to date."
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PER WARREN IRWIN:
"Fission Uranium’s nearby Triple R deposit is still valued by investors higher than NexGen’s Arrow, but Irwin is confident that is going to change as investors realize how special and large the Arrow discovery will be. Triple R is under a lake and is shallow, which would leave most of the deposit in the crown pillar if they used underground mining techniques. As a result, Fission proposes to build a dyke around the deposit and mine most of the deposit via open pit. Open-pit mining of a high-grade uranium resource also has radioactive dust and contaminated rainwater challenges. Although there are precedences for using dykes, like the Diavik diamond mine, Irwin has a strong preference for simpler mining operations when given a choice.
“Cameco already has two amazing but challenging deposits,” Irwin said of McArthur River and Cigar Lake. “These deposits are vulnerable to water ingress issues, and could be shut down or suspended at any time, just like what happened at McArthur River in 2003. Does Cameco mitigate that risk with an open-pit mine under a lake? Or do they mitigate it with a basement-hosted deposit like Arrow in an environment they are used to mining at Eagle Point?"
giz62 wrote: Torridog wrote "we have a PEA giving solid confirmation"
here is Cameco's take on a PEA's
Gitzel noted that PAs are intended to determine whether continued exploration, study and investment in a mineral property are warranted and do not involve the same rigour as a pre-feasibility or a feasibility study. PAs use inferred resources that are speculative in nature and under Canadian securities laws cannot be used in either pre-feasibility or feasibility studies. The PA has a low level of accuracy for capital and operating cost estimates. Pre-feasibility and full feasibility reviews are required for a reliable determination of economic viability.