Something else to ponder over- happy to accumulate at these...

Something else to ponder over- happy to accumulate at these levels


Strong grip on Samphire
Development on UraniumSA Ltd's Samphire
project was put on hold late 2011, but not
for the reason that observers might think.
It was the positive realisation that the granite
bedrock beneath the sedimentary uranium
resource at the Blackbush deposit was mineralised
and required immediate attention,
rather than the aftershocks felt by the uranium
industry after the Japanese tsunami.
Not that UraniumSA escaped without its fair
share of the sector's fallout.
"One day after Fukushima we announced
a resource of 42 mlbs of contained uranium
at our Samphire project and we sank without
trace," managing director Russel Bluck said.
"I hope that with the announcements that
we make today which continue to build on the
success of the Samphire project we may recover
some ground, but we will see how we
go."
The news of the granite hosted uranium
mineralisation was compelling enough for the
company to rethink its strategy at Blackbush
in December 2011; if UraniumSA stuck with
the original drive to mine via in-situ recovery
(ISR), it would have been in production late
2013.
"It's bad that we had to pause our push to
development, but good that this might be a
real company changer."
"We now have parallel strategies; we have
42 mlbs in sediments, but we don't know what
we have got in the granites. We believe it has
the potential to really change us if that comes
through."
Now UraniumSA has a two pronged strategy
for its flagship project. Strategy one sees
the company explore two different mining
scenarios at Blackbush; the preferred option
is ISR currently, but the company is also looking
into open-cut mining for the resource.
"It sounds crazy, but it actually starts to
stack up quite nicely and the reason for that
is if we find that the bedrock mineralisation is
economic, it sits directly below our sediment
hosted resource. We are going to have to take
them both out together."
Still ISR is faring well for Blackbush which
contains 28 mlbs of the project's sediment
resource and benefitted from thorough met
test work, which according to Bluck, has attained
experiment results which could influence
the wider uranium industry.
"One of the challenges has always been
that we are dealing with upper saline waters
and no one has ever successfully run an ISR
operation in the groundwater conditions that
we have."
"Thanks to Simon Hall our metallurgist
we have achieved world first results here.
We can get better recoveries in our horrible
groundwater than existing operations can get
from their fresh water."
The saline tolerant resin is open technology,
produces a pregnant solution of 80 ppm
uranium and when stripped produces recoveries
at 99-100%.
The first quarter of the year was jampacked
for UraniumSA, with first-pass drilling
of the deeper bedrock targets at Blackbush
undertaken, followed by an aeromag survey
and soil geochem across the wider Samphire
ground. A retention lease for the ISR field trial
was in the pipeline for submission.
Second quarter remains just as busy, with
the results of the Blackbush open-cut deposit
up for review, alongside the bedrock exploration
results, while the scope and design work
of the ISR field trial keeps getting pushed
along.
Luke Sizer
Media Monitors Client Service
Centre 1300 880 082
Copyright Agency Ltd (CAL)
licenced copy
Paydirt, National
01 Apr 2012, by Luke Sizer
General News, page 74 - Size: 173.99 cm²
Magazines Trade - Circulation: 4,028 (Monthly)
ID 141287034 BRIEF URANIUMSA PAGE 1 of 1