Russia takes aim at US nuclear power by throttling uranium
Limits creates potential supply risks to utilities operating American reactors that generate almost a fifth of the country’s electricity.
Toronto-based Denison Mines Corp. is testing in situ recovery at the Wheeler River uranium project this summer. The ISR tests will help determine the viability of using it for commercial production at Wheeler River, which would be the first uranium mine in Canada to use the technology.
Denison conducted field and laboratory testing of IRS during the pre-feasibility study. The results indicated that the flow of solution through the orebody will support commercial rates of production. The testing this summer is anticipated to increase the company’s confidence in using IRS.
This summer the work will focus on the second test area, with testing of two more areas to be done in 2020.
At the same time, the collection of baseline environmental data will be expanded to support the environmental impact assessment.
Denison will also continue with a 5,000-metre, 10-hole diamond drilling program to follow up and expand the area of unconformity-hosted uranium mineralization at the K-West trend.
Wheeler River is the largest undeveloped uranium occurrence in the eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin. The project is owned 90% by Denison and 10% by JCU (Canada) Exploration Co. Probable reserves have been calculated for the Phoenix deposit (59.7 million lb. of uranium oxide in 141,000 tonnes grading 19.1% uranium oxide) and the Gryphon deposit (49.7 million lb. in 1.3 million tonnes grading 1.8% uranium oxide).
This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal
