blr - valuation , page-8

binbin I agree we can only throw numbers around until all the required financial facts are announced within the PEA.

The main aim of this thread topic, was to attract some conversation regarding the significant upside that BLR's share price has still to attained.







But one important thing we need to remember though is that BLR will be selling an ablated Ore Concentrate to an end buyer, possibly Cameco or Energy Fuels to be Milled, not yellowcake therefore BLR will not be attaining the full Long Term Contract Pricing as per finished Milled " yellowcake " as would be the case with their own Mill.


MAJOR Benefit is no Mill Permit required


And the $80Mill Capital set up Costs is minimal



I will sum this up with the thoughts, that if the numbers look promising using the current production cost estimates & under production numbers, I cant wait to see the more favorable PEA study due over the coming 3-6 Months :)



Regards Grant




HERE'S SOME INFO REGARDING THE PROCESS INVOLVED IN MILLING OF URANIUM ORE



Uranium Ore Milling


After uranium ore is removed from the ground, it must be processed to extract the contained uranium. This process, “milling,” involves a sequence of physical and chemical treatment steps to extract the uranium from the native rock. The final product of milling is yellowcake, which is the commercial product sold by uranium producers to nuclear utility customers. During the peak

U.S. uranium production period of the early 1980’s, a total of 26 uranium mills were operating, and the U.S. was the world’s leading uranium producer. Today, there are four uranium mills remaining in the U.S., and only two of these are currently authorized for operations.

Uranium milling employs equipment and metallurgical processes, adapted from other extractive industries, specifically tailored to uranium recovery. The uranium mills of past decades and the mills in existence today have capacities ranging from 500 ore tons per day up to 3,000 tons per day. At average historical ore grades, annual uranium concentrate production normally ranged from around 1,000,000 pounds of yellowcake up to more than 7,000,000 pounds of yellowcake for the largest U.S. operations. Mills are of two basic designs – employing either acid leach or carbonate leach.

Uranium milling starts with the delivery of mined ore to the mill, where the ore is weighed and sampled to determine the uranium content and to prepare samples for process testing. Ore stockpiles are constructed to store sufficient ore volume to run the mill for a continuous period and to provide a “blend” of ore to ensure consistent feed to the mill. The first stage is crushing and grinding where the ore is reduced down to individual grains to ensure that the uranium mineralization is exposed to the leaching agents.

Pulped ore is fed to a multi-stage leaching circuit. Here the pulp is typically heated to enhance chemical reactivity, and leaching is initiated by addition of sulfuric acid or bicarbonate, depending on the basic mill design and ore amenability. The ore passes through several stages of leaching as leach agent and oxidizer concentrations are adjusted to achieve optimum dissolution of uranium (and also vanadium if present in the ore). With most of the uranium in solution, the ore slurry passes to a solid/liquid separation circuit, or CCD circuit, which is a series of large vessels where the slurry is mixed with wash water to remove as much uranium as possible and also separate the uranium-bearing liquor from the leached solids. At the completion of the CCD circuit, all recoverable uranium (typically in excess of 95% of the original uranium content) is in solution. The leached solids are pumped to the uranium mill tailings disposal cells.

The uranium-bearing liquor proceeds to a solvent extraction (“SX”) or ion exchange (“IX”) circuit. The SX or IX circuit selectively removes uranium from the uranium-bearing aqueous solution; uranium is preferentially collected by the organic solvent in SX or by resin beads in an IX circuit. This stage of uranium processing also concentrates the uranium into a smaller solution volume. The barren aqueous solution can be returned to the processing circuit or disposed in the tailings system.

In either SX or IX circuits, the affinity of the selective organic solvent or resin, as the case may be, for uranium is the key stage in removing uranium from a water-based solution. Uranium is stripped from the SX solvent or IX resin by a saline solution. This saline solution is the culmination of several steps to increase the concentration of uranium, and this solution is now ready to yield the final product. Uranium is precipitated from this strip solution by addition of ammonia or peroxide. The precipitated uranium is now a yellow slurry (hence “yellowcake”).

The yellowcake slurry is washed to remove contaminants and dewatered to form a thick paste. Final product preparation involves drying the yellowcake paste to remove free water. Drying is typically conducted in a high temperature furnace which bakes the cake, or it can also be dried in a rotary drum dryer. Yellowcake dryers are typically fired by propane or natural gas.

Dried yellowcake is packaged in steel 55-gallon drums, each containing about 800 to 1,000 pounds. Yellowcake is the final product of uranium mining and milling, and this is the product sold by producers to utility customers. Yellowcake subsequently goes through a number of complex processing steps (conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication) on its way to becoming fuel for a nuclear power plant.



.












.