UraniumSA has applied for a Retention Lease over the Blackbush deposit within its Mullaquana uranium project located south of Whyalla on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
The lease will enable UraniumSA to undertake an In-Situ Recovery Field Trial (ISR-FT) to confirm the results of its metallurgical test work and establish design parameters for future uranium yellowcake production. (A Retention Lease is a type of mining tenement.)
Subject to the completion of all the processes associated with the application, UraniumSA believes that the lease could be issued by December 2011.
The ISR-FT which is proposed to be conducted under the Retention Lease will provide key design criteria for the development of the Blackbush deposit towards operation as an in-situ recovery mine.
The Blackbush deposit is being evaluated as the first producing area in what has been shown to be a regionally extensive area of sedimentary hosted uranium mineralisation. Current JORC indicated resources within the Mullaquana project stand at 42Mlbs U3O8 (19,000 tonnes).
Earlier this month, UraniumSA lodged, with the South Australian Department of Primary Industries and Resources (PIRSA), a proposal for a Retention Lease. The proposal will be assessed by the State Government and made available for a period of public exhibition.
In January 2011, UraniumSA received from the Federal Government Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities a decision that the proposed trial was “not a controlled action if undertaken in a particular manner”.
The effect of the decision is that this component of the project will proceed under the South Australian regulatory regime without referral back to the Commonwealth.
The proposed ISR-FT will be located within the Blackbush deposit and will be some 3.5 km west from the coast of Spencer Gulf.
Uranium mineralisation is located within an unconsolidated channel sand sequence which lies approximately 50m below the surface and is overlain by 40m of impervious clays and marls. The Retention Lease area is wholly contained within land which UraniumSA has contracted to purchase.