Canada’s GoldMining (TSX:GOLD) has identified at least 70km of prospective trend within three corridors on its Rea Uranium Project in the Western Athabasca Basin.
The Vancouver-based explorer, which has a market capitalisation of $231.6 million, undertook reprocessing, inversion and modeling of historic geophysical surveys work.
Graphite-bearing shear zones, which are prospective for unconformity-style uranium mineralisation in the Athabasca Basin, were identified in three northwest trending corridors.
CEO Alistair Still says the work uncovered several targets displaying similarities to Athabasca Basin uranium deposits.
“This work has highlighted the most prospective areas for follow-up exploration, outlined over 70km within three distinct corridors, each with several target areas displaying geophysical signatures consistent with known Athabasca Basin uranium deposits,” he says.
“We are extremely encouraged by the targets we have generated within the Athabasca Basin, an area that contains some of the world’s largest and highest-grade uranium deposits.”
The 75%-owned project is located around 60km from major uranium mines including Fission Uranium’s (TSX:FCU) Triple R deposit and NexGen Energy’s (TSX:NXE) Arrow deposit, which are currently in development.
The remaining 25% interest is held by uranium producer Orano Canada. The 125,328-hectare Rea Project surrounds Orano’s “high-grade” Dragon Lake prospect at the Maybelle River project.
Dragon Lake was discovered in 1988 and previously reported historic drill intersections included 5m @ 17.7% uranium and 1.7m @ 4.7%.
Maybelle River (11km), Net Lake (20km) and Keane Lake (40km) are the three corridors that host the prospective targets.
The Maybelle River Corridor trends northward from Orano’s Maybelle River Project.
Five historic drill holes testing a section of the Maybelle River Corridor on the Rea Project intersected anomalous uranium values in two holes.
GoldMining says that anomalous pathfinder elements and pathfinder minerals including clay alteration and dravite, which is a distinctive accessory mineral associated with many major Athabasca uranium occurrences, are present in three of the five drill holes.
Meanwhile, the Net Lake Corridor has only witnessed historic wide-spaced drilling of 20 holes, of which five intersected anomalous uranium values and associated pathfinder elements and minerals.
The Keane Lake Corridor is largely untested except for two historic drill holes that intersected anomalous uranium values in the south-central area of the Rea Project.
GoldMining says each of the three corridors are interpreted as “potentially significant and deeply rooted” basement structures, which are known to be fundamental to the formation of Athabasca uranium deposits.