By my limited understanding, overburden is anything above the...

By my limited understanding, overburden is anything above the target ore that is not going to be processed. With alaskites, once you process the said ore, there is then further overburden over the next alaskite and so on. As this will not be an underground mine specifically targetting a vein or body of ore, and will need to remove the waste around the alaskite (or overburden), then there will be a significant amount of 'overburden' to be removed, including the pit development for mining activites. For a deposit 2300x300x350 ish, this pit will eventually end up being gigantic with millions of tons of waste being removed. Under current economic conditions, this may be expensive (ie, plant, fuel, and even wages)

One thing to consider though is that perhaps there is significant enough leaching in between the alaskites to warrant processing that ore? They have only announced the one hole south of the deposit to have U in the metasediments, but perhaps this could be contained in other parts of the deposit, like with Rossing? 40% of Rossing is metasediments. This may be a real kicker, to be confirmed with further drilling...

Max.