China’s niche metals export ban lifts prospects for Canadian firms
Canadian companies dabbling in these minerals include Teck Resources, Neo Performance Materials and Northern Graphite.
Peninsula Energy (ASX: PEN) announced Thursday it has restarted operations at its flagship Lance project in Wyoming following a five-year hiatus. With this, the Australian group becomes the newest uranium supplier in North America.
The Lance project represents one of the largest US uranium projects in size and scale, with a defined JORC (2012) resource of 58 million lb. of uranium oxide (U3O8). The mine restart plan envisions an initial 10-year ISR (in-situ recovery) operation with a production estimate of 4.1 million lb. from the Ross area, then moving onto the Kendrick area.
The restart of production at Lance as a low-pH ISR operation marks a historic milestone for Peninsula on its journey to become a fully independent producer of uranium yellowcake, the company stated in its press release.
Production will initially come from selected areas of Mine Unit 1 and be routed to the rebuilt Phase 1 satellite plant ion exchange system for uranium capture. According to Peninsula, the flow rates and grades are so far matching the planned levels and are expected to continue increasing as preconditioning is completed in subsequent header houses and a chemical oxidant (hydrogen peroxide) is introduced.
The captured uranium will be stored on the ion exchange resin until the Phase 2 plant area, which is scheduled for full commissioning in the first quarter of calendar 2025.
Construction of the Phase 2 plant area is currently underway, with Peninsula focused on completing the resin elution and precipitation circuits by mid-January, allowing first elutions and yellowcake precipitation. This will be followed by construction of the yellowcake filtration and drying circuits, currently scheduled for February, which would then lead to production of the first dry yellowcake product by early March.
On completion of Phase 2 construction, the Lance projects will be home to a 5,000 GPM uranium recovery ion-exchange process plant, with the capability to independently produce up to 2 million lb. per annum of dry yellowcake (U3O8) product, the company said.
“We have restarted Lance at an opportune time, with the long-term fundamentals and demand for uranium incredibly strong, as nuclear energy grows into the leading and most reliable clean energy solution,” managing director and chief executive officer Wayne Heili commented.
Peninsula is anticipating 600,000 lb. of U3O8 production at Lance during the 2025 ramp-up year, down from its earlier forecast of 700,000 to 900,000 lb. This revised guidance was due to delays in preconditioning the newly developed header house at Mine Unit 3.
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