PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Uranium developer Peninsula Energy has unveiled a new life-of-mine (LoM) plan for the Ross and Kendrick production areas at its Lance uranium project, in Wyoming, which could see production restart in late 2024.

Peninsula earlier this year flagged a "significant delay" in the restart of production at Lance, which had initially been planned for the first quarter of 2023, and subsequently pushed back to mid-2023.

Peninsula said on Thursday that the revised strategy for Lance would position the company as a fully independent, end-to-end producer of dry yellowcake, and would mitigate third party processing risks by bringing the complete process of uranium yellowcake production in-house, from the start of production.

The LoM features a 5 000 gallons per minute uranium in-situ recovery plant to produce some two-million pounds a year of dry yellowcake product over an estimated production life of ten years, and a yellowcake LoM production of 14.8-million pounds.

Production in the first two years is planned to be solely from the Ross production area, with production from Kendrick planned to start in 2027.

The new LoM has estimated a capital cost of $285.8-million, with the remaining capital to first production estimated at $53.4-million. The updated financials estimate an LoM operating cash flow of $258.2-million before tax, and a net present value of $116.2-million with an internal rate of return of 26%.

The project’s all-in sustaining cost has been estimated at $42.46/lb.

“Peninsula remains committed to bringing Lance back into production as quickly as reasonably achievable,” said MD and CEO Wayne Heili on Thursday.

“Our expert team has revised the Ross and Kendrick production area LoM model to assess the impact of expanding the process plant with additional ion exchange, elution, precipitation, and product drying functionality installed from the commencement of production. The new model is underpinned by a quality resource and detailed technical evaluations.

“The results generated demonstrate the favourable economic potential of Lance and, importantly, confirm that the company is well positioned to move ahead with the plant expansion and production restart within the current dynamics of the uranium market,” said Heili.

“We have a world-class project, strong economic and operational numbers, and the team in place to establish Peninsula as a fully independent end-to-end producer of dry yellowcake. We have held productive discussions with all our customers and are appreciative of their flexibility and willingness to consider amending future delivery schedules resulting from our revised production schedule.

“Peninsula has a unique competitive advantage in being the only ASX-listed, US-based uranium company authorised to use the industry leading low pH ISR method. Based on the advanced development stage of the project, Peninsula has a rapid pathway to complete the facility additions and to return Lance to production in late calendar year 2024.”