PERTH (miningweekly.com) – An independent scoping study and a preliminary economic assessment have confirmed uranium developer Toro Energy’s expected improvements on the Wiluna project, in Western Australia, following the incorporation of the Lake Maitland deposit into the project.

Based solely on mining the already-approved Centipede and Lake Way deposits, the Wiluna project was expected to have a mine life of 16 years with average production of two-million pounds of uranium oxide (U₃O₈) a year, for the first ten years of operation.

Total production over the life of the mine would reach 30.2-million pounds of U₃O₈.

“The new results validate Toro’s project development work in 2013, in particular the drilling that delivered resource upgrades at each of Centipede, Millipede and Lake Way, as well as the acquisition of Lake Maitland,” said Toro MD Vanessa Guthrie.

She pointed out that the studies had also shown that under suitable market conditions, lower cutoff grades would allow the exploitation of the 200 parts per million cutoff resource at these deposits.

“Moreover, there remains further upside potential at Wiluna, as the mining study does not include the indicated and inferred resource at the project’s Dawson Hinkler and Nowthanna deposits, which could extend the total mine life well beyond 20 years.”

Guthrie added that the study results were achieved without affecting the processing facility throughput or development approvals at the Centipede and Lake Way deposits.

She said the company’s immediate priority now was to refer the Millipede and Lake Maitland deposits for state and federal environmental assessment.

“During 2014, Toro will pursue the further necessary government environmental approvals and progress funding arrangements with potential partners to underpin project financing and project offtake agreements.”

Meanwhile, Toro has also determined that an additional A$27-million in capital would be required for the Wiluna project to acquire and operate a mining fleet under an owner-operator model.

While the total capital costs for the project would be confirmed during the definitive feasibility study, previous estimates have placed the capital cost at between A$207-million and A$269-million, if the engineering, procurement, construction and management costs were included.