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Fission Uranium has just been awarded the Mining Journal’s Exploration of the Year award – the first uranium company since 2009 to do so. We sat down with Ross McElroy, President, COO and Chief Geologist, for Fission Uranium to get an update on the company.
You have an 11,000m $7 million winter exploration program coming up. What’s the current status?
We’re currently in the planning stage while we wait for the full winter freeze to set in. It’s a great deal of work and we’ve been in the planning phase for some weeks already. We’ve got a layered, multi-discipline team, including geologists, geochemists, geophysicists… with a 97% zone drilling success rate our track record speaks for itself but it takes a lot of expertise to maintain the level of exploration and development success we’ve had a PLS.
Our team is very tight-knit and we are laser-focused on continuing the growth rate we’ve achieved in the last three years so we always get very excited as we get closer to the program kick off. In total, we’re expecting to drill between 35 and 40 holes with a 60/40 split in terms of delineation vs regional exploration.
You had a lot of success during the summer, what will you be focusing on now?
We have four main points of focus: growing the new high-grade R600W zone, growing the Triple R, following up on the key regional exploration targets and growing the R1620E zone where we hit our first high-grade mineralization during the last drill program. On the surface it might seem like those are the same points we highlighted at the start of the summer but in reality we’re entering a new stage.
The R600W zone saw phenomenal growth over the summer, so much so that putting out an initial resource estimate for the zone in 2016 is not only viable, it’s something we are now considering. The zone is still open in every direction so we’ll be pushing hard for some big hits because every mineralized hole drilled this winter has the chance to increase that initial resource estimate.
The Triple R Deposit also saw very impressive growth in multiple areas and remains open in several directions. Perhaps most interesting for us is the new high-grade area that opened up at the eastern end of the deposit during summer drilling.
What has changed for us since the start of the summer is the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) we announced in September, which gave us a very strong baseline to build on with a very low OPEX of US $14.02, pre-tax 1.4 years payback and pre-tax NPV of $1.81 Billion. Whenever you can expand on a high-grade area of mineralization you know you have the potential to make a big impact on the economics of a deposit. Improving the numbers established by the PEA will make the Triple R increasingly valuable.
Although it’s not part of the Triple R deposit, it’s also worth mentioning that we encountered the first high grades at the R1620E zone in the summer. The zone is located approximately 500m east along trend of the Triple R deposit. Whether it’s actually connected to the Triple R is hard to say at this time because our drilling has been focused elsewhere so having some high-grade mineralization that far east is encouraging.
Regional exploration drilling last winter opened up the R600W zone and we spent much of the summer building it into something very special. We are hoping that this winter we can make another leap forward with our exploration drilling thanks to some very interesting regional hits during the summer.
We drilled anomalous radioactivity on both the Patterson Lake Corridor and the Forest Lake Corridor. Forest Lake has some very attractive geology and we were very pleased when we hit with hole PLS15-433. The hole didn’t intersect high grade uranium mineralization but it is prospective and warrants follow up drilling at Forest Lake.
However, the highest priority regional targets for us are on the PLG-1B EM conductor – a basement conductor sitting about half a kilometer north of the PLG3-B conductor, host to the Triple R deposit, the R600W zone and the R1620E zone.
During the summer we drilled three holes on this conductor. Each one had very good alteration and two of them showed anomalous radioactivity in the down-hole gamma probe. In fact, the probe showed almost 8,000 cps for hole PLS15-419. We didn’t get those readings when we measured the recovered core but it’s not unusual to have parts of the core washed out when you are drilling through clay-rich zones.
The R600W has generated a lot of excitement. Do you think it will continue its rate of expansion and when will you add it to the resource?
The R600W zone is definitely a big deal. It’s high-grade, shallow and land-based – everyone following the Fission story knows that now – but one of the reasons it’s so important is that it has the potential to make a substantial difference to the Triple R. I’m not just talking about adding to the resource – though it’s close enough that it will indeed be part of the Triple R. It has the potential to significantly impact the overall economics because of robust mineralization, proximity to the Triple R zone and the fact that it’s land-based.
As for how it will develop, we’re obviously very encouraged about progress to date but you don’t know how it will expand until you start drilling more holes. Obviously the summer success speaks volumes and the fact that we encountered strong anomalous radioactivity just under 500m north of the R600W has us extremely excited.
When it comes to growing the deposit and the R600W, is it really as simple as just drilling 10 to 15m out all the way around the edges?
Only if you want to run out of money before you’re even half way around! No. it’s not at all simple and anyone that tells you it is doesn’t know what they are talking about. Uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin region are notoriously hard to find. They pinch, they swell, they can suddenly change direction and can also have complex geometry. When a single drill hole can cost six figures, it’s absolutely vital to do the right planning and that’s why we have such a specialized team.
We don’t just drill all the way around because we don’t have to. It’s how the Fission team was able to chase the boulders up ice to make the discovery, how we were able to do massive step outs from the discovery hole. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a team like ours because time and money is everything in an exploration program.
How much does technology come into play? I know that the proprietary airborne survey that Fission-developed with a company called Special Projects Inc. was a critical step in identifying the high-grade boulder field at PLS. Is that survey still in use?
That’s correct. The survey we developed with Special Projects Inc. allowed us to prospect from the air with the same accuracy as ground prospecting. After we flew PLS we analysed the data and identified a very strong anomaly which turned out to be the boulder field. Having the ability to cover a lot of ground very quickly and with extremely high resolution is an enormous advantage. It’s so accurate that a ground team of geologists was able to travel to the coordinates and easily find the first high-grade uranium boulders. The PLS property has been completely surveyed using the approach and as a result of the Fission takeover of Alpha Minerals, the technology was acquired by Fission 3.0 Corp. and is being used to fly their properties.
We do make great use of other survey technology, including radon surveys which can detect radon which is the gas given off by uranium. Radon is very tricky and fell out of favour with many uranium explorers some years ago as a detection method because it’s highly mobile which means the location you find the gas can be a long way from the actual mineralization. However, we’ve developed a method of using it in winter conditions that has been very useful in our drill planning stage and has helped us make very large step outs with tremendous success.
So when do you expect drilling to start?
Well the winter conditions need to really set in first. Based on past programs I’d say we’ll probably have the first drills turning in mid-January.