Infini Resources (ASX: I88) has launched a field mission aimed at defining new uranium deposits at its 100 per cent-owned Yeelirrie North project in the Western Australian desert near Wiluna, just a fortnight after committing to a major exploration expansion.
The expansion has been prompted by the company’s recent desktop review of regional radiometric data that led to a 368 per cent increase to the now 761-square-kilometre project area.
Significantly, Infini’s new ground – which will potentially make it the second biggest holding in the area – lies immediately adjacent to or contiguous with the historic Yeelirrie uranium project, about 70km south-west of Wiluna. Yeelirrie was discovered in mid-1971 by WMC Resources and is now considered one of the world’s biggest high-grade undeveloped uranium deposits.
The deposit contains a 2018 JORC-compliant measured and indicated resource of 128.1 million pounds (58,100 tonnes) of uranium oxide at an average ore grade of 1500 parts per million. In August 2012, then owner BHP sold the project to its current holder, Canadian mining company Cameco for US$430 million (AU$668 million).
The Yeelirrie deposit is one of only four uranium deposits that was permitted to be mined by the WA Government prior to the State’s 2017 ban on new mining of the radioactive element.
The Yeelirrie North Project represents an exceptional opportunity for the company to potentially discover new uranium deposits in an already proven tier-1 camp. Cameco’s world-class Yeelirrie and satellite uranium deposits are located directly adjacent to our project, with our newly-staked licenses applications all contiguous with Cameco’s ground.
Infini Resources chief executive officer Charles Armstrong
The company has already placed two geological teams on the new ground within a fortnight of expanding its licence area. It is mapping 24 significant radiometric anomalies it recently identified in four separate applied-for and pending licence areas.
The field team is using hand-held spectrometers to detect uranium, thorium and potassium in outcrops within the radiometrically-anomalous areas interpreted from the desktop geophysical data review. The data includes several historical airborne geophysical surveys commissioned between 1994 and 2010 by historical explorers, government bodies and geophysical service companies and which were successfully reprocessed and analysed to produce a radiometric targeting map.
The continuing review will almost certainly be an iterative process as fieldwork with scintillometers progressively ground-truths and validates the interpreted anomalous areas.
The work is expected to assist with the generation of a regional geological interpretation to identify the existence, location and size of paleochannels that might host previously-undiscovered uranium deposits at Yeelirrie.
Management says it is encouraged by the similarity of its radiometric anomalies and geology to those within the eastern leases of Cameco’s Yeelirrie project area and at other nearby uranium deposits such as Toro Energy’s 9.4 million-pound uranium oxide Dawson-Hinkler deposit, which is situated a mere stone’s throw south-east of Infini’s easternmost new licence application area.
The established local geological and radiometric consistencies across the various projects should offer Infini a useful head start on its own geological interpretations. As a result, it may well be able to quickly home in on potential uranium deposits by identifying surface expressions in geological mapping and sampling, which is now underway.
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