Uranium explorer Deep Yellow is making strides towards extending the mine life of its Tumas project to a targeted 30 years, with a recent drill programme unearthing additional resources to prolong the current life-of-mine (LoM).
The primary objective of the reverse circulation resource expansion and infill drilling programme completed to the west of the Tumas 3 deposit was to identify additional resources to extend the current 22.5-year LoM.
Based on this work, the drill programme has successfully increased the Tumas 3 mineral resource, delivering an 11% uplift in indicated mineral resources to 60.6-million pounds at 325 parts per million (ppm) uranium oxide-equivalent (eU3O8), using a 100 ppm cut-off grade
The drill programme also identified a further 1.2-million pounds of inferred mineral resources in the same area.
Tumas 3 is the biggest uranium deposit along the Tumas palaeodrainage. Together with the Tumas 1, 1 East, Tumas 2 and Tubas deposits, the palaeodrainage contains about 139-million pounds of U3O8 inferred and indicated resources, of which 67.3-million pounds are currently contained in a probable ore reserve.
"The Tumas palaeochannel already holds 30-million pounds of uranium oxide in the inferred resource category which is available for future upgrading to an indicated resource status. The results from this programme, together with the resource growth potential through future exploration across the Tumas project area, provide us great confidence that we can deliver on our long-term LoM target at Tumas,” said MD John Borshoff.