Black Range Minerals drilling again at Hansen uranium deposit in Colorado, U.S.
Black Range Minerals has commenced drilling at its Hansen uranium project in Clorado, U.S. Picture: Yellowcake recovered from uranium ore.
Black Range Minerals (ASX:BLR) has commenced drilling at its Hansen
uranium project in Colorado, U.S.
Together with the Taylor Ranch deposit, the project contains indicated and
inferred resources of 90.9 million pounds at a grade of 0.06% uranium, making
it one of the largest uranium projects in the country.
It also boasts very low operating costs of US$30 per pound based on a study in 2012, making Taylor Ranch one of the uranium projects likely to get funding.
So it is about to get interesting with a new drill
program ultimately targeting receipt of all mine permits for the development of
the Hansen Deposit in 2016 and into production thereafter.
The drilling program will comprise the installation of five new water
monitoring wells adjacent to the project’s 39.4 million pound Hansen uranium
deposit, and will be completed in around 4 weeks.
Baseline environmental data will be collected from these new wells and
integrated with data from ongoing surface and ground-water monitoring programs,
critical to streamlining the mine permit application and approval process.
A scoping study for Hansen has estimated capital costs of $80 million,
production of 2 million pounds uranium per annum and an initial mine life of
7-8 years.
Offsite milling is anticipated, reducing capital costs and streamlining mine
permitting.
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