Canada-based resource company Fission Uranium announced in January that it had started a 90-hole winter drill and geophysical programme at its Patterson Lake South (PLS) property in the Athabasca basin, in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Drilling at the high-grade uranium discovery will focus on further delineating the seven shallow-depth zones identified to date, while working to eliminate the gaps between the zones.

In addition, 15% to 20% of the drilling will test several particularly high-priority targets identified through geophysics and radon gas surveys. The winter programme will cost $12- million and is part of the overall $20-million that Fission Uranium currently expects to spend on exploration at PLS this year.

This 90-hole drill programme will be the most aggressive programme that the company has implemented to date. The previous two programmes enjoyed a mineralisation hit success of more than 86%, with several high-grade assays. This escalated PLS from a single discovery hole to seven zones on trend along a strike length of 1.78 km. All seven zones remain open in all directions.

Fission Uranium president, COO and chief geologist Ross McElroy says: “The tremendous success of drilling at PLS to date has not only given us seven shallow-depth mineralised zones but also a solid understanding of the project’s geology. “While growing and connecting the zones is our principal aim, our work with radon and geophysics has given us a number of highly promising targets that we will begin testing.”

Up to five diamond drill core rigs will be used to drill at a depth of 30 m. Between 80% and 85% of the drilling will be delineated, with multiple close-spaced drill holes testing outwards from known locations of mineralisation to establish the width and strike of the main mineralised trend. This will help grow the five high-grade zones identified by Fission Uranium and also eliminate the distance between them.

The remaining 15% to 20% of the drilling will focus on exploration to test high-priority electromagnetic conductors, which have been prioritised based on ground geophysics interpretations and the results of a radon survey.