There’s always a lot going on in the nuclear industry and I like to use this blog to help people keep up to speed with issues and events that have some sort of relevance to the uranium market. For the next few posts, however, I want to cover Fission itself.
Even without the Pitchstone properties which we’ve agreed to acquire, I believe it’s fair to say that Fission is the leading junior in the Athabasca Basin. The Basin, as you know, is the most important uranium district in the world – with the highest grades (ten times the world average) and responsible for nearly 20% of the world’s uranium production in 2011.
Now if you’re only just researching Fission your first question will be ‘what makes you think Fission is the most attractive junior in the Basin?’ My full answer will be apparent over the next posts but for now, let’s take a look at our flagship property – Waterbury Lake. The quick stats are as follows:
• 43-101 resource: 7.4 million lbs @1.99% (indicated), 1.5 million lbs @0.45% (inferred)
• Grades X10 world average
• Strong, established JV• Highly strategic location
• Aggressive drill program
• Close to high-capacity mills
Those stats speak for themselves but it’s worth expanding on a few of them. For example, our JV is with a Korean consortium led by Kepco. Now Kepco is a major force in the nuclear industry. It’s the largest provider of electricity is South Korea (responsible for 93% of power generation), it manufactures nuclear power stations and it processes nuclear fuel.
Having such a strong JV is important as it is helping us to run a very aggressive drill program – one that has been delivering promising results. You can get the latest drilling details from our most recent presentation.
The property is in a highly strategic location. If you’ve not looked at any of our presentations I strongly recommend you do so. We are surrounded by over 100 million lbs of uranium and are immediately adjacent to the Roughrider deposit that Rio paid $654 million for last year. What’s also interesting is that our discovery and exploration timeline is proving to be very similar to Hathor before they were taken over.
We enjoy superb infrastructure, are close to advanced, high capacity mills and have access to a professional workforce that includes 3rd generation miners. Best of all, our COO and technical team leader, Ross McElroy, has been instrumental in three of the last eight major uranium discoveries in the Athabasca Basin. If you’re not familiar with Mr McElroy, you should check out his background.
You can also read a blow by blow timeline and detailed overview of Waterbury Lake.
That’s it for now. Come back later in the week when I cover other key elements of Fission and as always, please get in touch if you have any questions.
