JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed uranium explorer Uranium Resources has completed a maiden Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum- (CIM-) compliant mineral estimate for its 100%-owned Mtonya play, in Tanzania, indicating an inferred resource of 3.6-million tonnes.

The current resource consisted predominantly of tier 1 mineralisation over 4.5 km of the 36-km-long Mtonya reduction oxidation corridor, which included the untested Nyoka and Lukimwa uranium targets.

The Tanzania-focused company said in a statement on Friday that the resource potentially included both openpittable material, as well as uranium mineralisation below the water table, which could be amenable to in-situ recovery (ISR).

Estimates at a range of cutoff grades confirmed that there was a substantial and robust component to the resource base for increasing the cut-off grade from 50 parts per million (ppm) yellowcake (U3O8) to 100 ppm U3O8.

Uranium Resources MD Alex Gostevskikh said the maiden mineral resource for Mtonya was “encouraging”. 

“In particular, we are impressed with the robust continuity of the mineralised strata and preliminary mineralogy analyses on core samples.

“This initial mineral resource estimate at Mtonya is a major milestone and signifies several crucial things – the potential of the Luwegu basin for ISR uranium mineralisation, the ability of our team to generate credible exploration models and, most importantly, to bring these models to life,” he commented. 

Uranium Resources would now conduct infill and step-out drilling programmes to further expand the Mtonya resource and execute a series of pump tests on the Mtonya mineralisation.

These exploration efforts would focus on uranium resources amenable to ISR, which it considered the most cost-effective and environmentally acceptable method of uranium extraction.