Investing News NetworkAUSTRALIA
Valor Resources Limited (Valor) or (the Company) (ASX:VAL) is pleased to announce the completion of an extensive data review and targeting process on the Cluff Lake Uranium Project (the Project) in the western Athabasca Basin. This work has highlighted a significant number of very prospective targets, which will be followed up on-ground in the coming few weeks. In addition, an extensive airborne gravity gradiometry survey has recently been completed at the Project, with additional targets expected to be identified when the final data is reviewed".
HIGHLIGHTS
- Seven high-priority targets defined based on historical data and geophysical interpretation
- Highlighted by surface geochemical anomalies up to 0.15% U3O8
- Airborne gravity gradiometry (AGG) survey completed to identify further targets
- Project located 7km east of Orano’s Cluff Lake Mine which produced 62.5 Mlbs @ 0.92% U3O8
- Potential for both Athabasca basement-hosted and unconformity-style uranium deposits
- Permitting well advanced to start on ground exploration activity in June including mapping and sampling, to design drilling program
Executive Chairman George Bauk comments “The data review has highlighted excellent targets including several key structures, and this combined with outputs from the recently completed airborne gravity gradiometry survey will provide us with the priority targets that require on-ground follow-up leading to drilling. The gravity survey provides the third dimension (depth) to the other geological data sets to assist with identifying and prioritising drill targets.”
“We are within 7km of a significant historical uranium mine, which was operated by Areva (now Orano), the leading French nuclear organisation. This group of deposits produced over 62m pounds of U3O8 at 0.92% U3O8 (or 9,200ppm U3O8). These deposits were small in terms of physical size, but due to their high-grade nature, were economically significant. We are targeting our exploration activity to account for the physical size of known resources in the area.”
“We are also working through compiling all the historical exploration data from our eight projects in the Athabasca Basin, and we plan to release the reviews of all projects in the next three months. During this time, the exploration team will continue on-ground exploration and interpretation of the new airborne survey data from Cluff Lake, Hook Lake and Hidden Bay.”
Airborne gravity survey – recently completed
An airborne gravity gradiometry (AGG) survey has been completed across approximately 80% of the Cluff Lake Project area (622km2). A total of 2,755 line kms were flown in the survey, at a line spacing of 200m. To the Company’s knowledge, this is the first modern airborne gravity survey completed over the project area. The preliminary data is currently being compiled and reviewed, with the results expected later this month.
The AGG data will help delineate geology and structure that are potentially important in the formation of a uranium deposit. Gravity anomalies can provide direct detection of the hydrothermal alteration associated with a uranium deposit. Hydrothermally altered (de-silicified) rocks have a lower density then the unaltered host rocks and can therefore be identified as gravity lows. An example of this is the basement-hosted Arrow Uranium Deposit, which has a Total Mineral Resource of 337.4 million pounds U3O8 at a grade of 1.8%, which was discovered in 2014 by NexGen Energy Ltd. The discovery of the Arrow Deposit was, in part, the result of drill testing a circular gravity low with a diameter of around 1km. (sourced from Arrow Deposit, Rook I Project, Saskatchewan, NI 43-101 Technical Report on Feasibility Study).
Historical data review targets
The following targets are based on a thorough review of historical exploration data which has been integrated with a detailed geological interpretation of all publicly available geophysical data completed by Valor’s consultant geophysics team, Terra Resources. The historical exploration data is from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Between the 1990s and the present day, little uranium exploration has been carried out in this area. Details of relevant drill holes and surface sampling information that have been used in determining some of these targets, have been included in Appendices 1 and 2. All diamond drill holes have been reported and other drillholes with maximum U assay of >1ppm have been reported. The surface samples reported have been filtered based on: Organic samples >5ppm U, Soil samples > 2ppm U, rock chip(boulder) and unknown sample types > 5ppm U. Due to the historical nature of some of this data, some aspects of the sampling and drilling cannot be verified and therefore some caution must be applied. The Company intends to carry out on-ground work to verify aspects of the historical data before advancing targets to the drilling stage.
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