 |
 |
Northern Athabasca Projects
 
Property Description and Location
UEX Corporation's ("UEX") 100%-owned Northern Athabasca Projects (the "Projects") are located within the northern part of the Athabasca Basin, extending approximately 80 km westward from the hamlet of Stony Rapids to just south of the hamlet of Fond du Lac, Saskatchewan, and immediately adjacent to UEX's Riou Lake and Black Lake Projects. The five projects, totaling 72,537 hectares (179,243 acres) in 21 claims, are named as follows: Butler Lake - 13,134 hectares; Fond du Lac - 16,838 hectares; Otherside River - 8,055 hectares; Munroe Lake - 18,275 hectares; and Jacques Point - 16,235 hectares. UEX selected the five project areas in consideration of their favourable geophysical and structural characteristics following a uranium discovery in 2004 at UEX's nearby Black Lake joint-venture project.
Exploration is at an early stage, and to date airborne and ground geophysical surveys and drilling in widely spaced diamond drill holes have been completed. Although outside the well-known, uranium-bearing eastern portions of the Athabasca Basin, the potential for uranium mineralization in the area has been demonstrated by the nearby Fond du Lac Deposit and other prospects, and by unconformity-style uranium mineralization which has been intersected in drilling by UEX on the adjacent Black Lake property.
Geological Setting
The Northern Athabasca property is underlain by 100 to 500 metres of Proterozoic sandstone of the Athabasca Group that dips shallowly to the south. The sandstone unconformably overlies Archean-aged basement rocks of the Tantato Domain, which comprise metavolcanic units, graphite-bearing metasedimentary gneiss, mafic sills and granites that have been affected by amphibolite to granulite facies metamorphism. Extensive Archean mylonitic shear zones are developed in the region, including the Black Lake Shear Zone east of the project, which defines the boundary between the Tantato Domain and the Mudjatik Domain. Basement rocks trend mainly northeast, and are affected by tight, megascopic folds.
Exploration Activities and Results
UEX Corporation staked the five Northern Athabasca Projects in 2004 and, beginning in 2005, carried out "first-pass" airborne exploration programs that included a MEGATEM(r) airborne survey over the properties to better assess the potential for the project area to host unconformity-style uranium mineralization. Several areas were noted for follow-up work including additional ground geophysics and/or testing by diamond drilling.
In 2006, a ground-based Fixed Loop time-domain electromagnetic ("TDEM") survey carried out at the Butler Lake Project further refined previous airborne EM anomalies, in particular a conductive trend which lies in an up-ice direction from a radioactive, highly-altered sandstone boulder found during historical prospecting in the area.
UEX also carried out diamond drilling in 2006 on four of the Northern Athabasca Projects to follow up on the preceding geophysical programs. On Munroe Lake, hole MNL-02 encountered strong dravite alteration in the sandstone. At Butler Lake, anomalous uranium values with up to 5 to 10 times background were observed in drill holes in the basal 30 metres of sandstone. A subsequent borehole electromagnetic survey of holes BTL-01 and BTL-02 indicated that a strong flat-lying basement conductor lies about 50 metres below the end of both holes.
A Fixed Loop TDEM survey carried out on two separate grids on the Munroe Lake Project in 2007 confirmed several conductive trends that were first identified by the 2005 airborne EM survey. A DC resistivity survey was carried out over several of these conductive trends to test for the presence of hydrothermal alteration in the Athabasca sandstone associated with the conductor.
Diamond drilling in 2007 consisted of four holes and the extension of one previous hole. At Butler Lake, hole BTL 02 was deepened in order to intersect the conductor identified by a borehole electromagnetic survey. The extension hole intersected numerous thin layers of fresh to chloritized and sheared amphibolite containing 1-5% disseminated pyrrhotite. Two additional holes at Butler Lake tested tested the possible up dip and strike extensions of the conductive zone intersected in BTL-02. In addition, two holes were drilled on the Jacques Point Project to test ground TDEM conductors offset by faults interpreted from magnetics. No graphitic conductors were intersected in these four holes and no significant geochemical results were returned.
Future Exploration
UEX continues to evaluate the uranium exploration potential of the Northern Athabasca Projects. Within the northern rim area of the Athabasca Basin near the Projects, several Proterozoic unconformity-type deposits have been historically discovered by prospecting the northernmost margins of the basin including Fond du Lac, Middle Lake and Nisto, all located within 50 kilometres of the Projects. The occurrence of this style of mineralization in the area indicates the potential for unconformity-type uranium mineralization on the property.
|
