PERTH (miningweekly.com) – A scoping study into a standalone uranium operation at Lake Maitland, at the Wiluna project, in Western Australia, is advancing and has flagged significant cost savings.
Toro told shareholders on Thursday that the company’s research and development studies over many years have successfully identified and evaluated the opportunity to substantially reduce the size and cost of its processing facility at the Wiluna uranium project through a redesign of the proposed plant and processing flowsheet.
Beneficiation and process design studies for the Lake Maitland deposit in particular resulted in a potential large capital cost reduction for the hydrometallurgical processing plant to A$87.9-million from A$134.1-million in Toro’s prior study for the Wiluna uranium project.
A new processing flowsheet was developed which includes an initial beneficiation step that produced a low-mass, high-grade uranium concentrate. The new processing flowsheet was found to improve efficiency the most in lithologies with high clay content and Lake Maitland, which hosts 75% to 80% of the mineral resources, is clay dominant.
As Lake Maitland is most amenable to the improvements and cost reductions identified, a scoping study was initiated for a standalone Lake Maitland uranium/vanadium mining and processing operation, Toro said.
As a result of the redesigned process, vanadium can be successfully produced as a by-product of the leaching and treatment of Lake Maitland uranium ore, at a marginal cost including only an additional A$5.7-million in capital cost.
Toro said on Thursday that the total processing infrastructure capital expenditure (capex) for Lake Maitland of A$93.7-million, including the production of vanadium, is expected to be adjusted primarily for inflation.
The capex for a Lake Maitland operation is expected to be finalised in the short term and released ahead of the revised operating costs estimate.