The Athabasca Basin is home to the world’s highest grade #uranium deposits. What if I told you the first uranium discovery in the basin was made because of a not so legitimate business expense!
Time for a thread 🧵
Time for a thread 🧵
In the mid 1960s a consortium of oil companies in Calgary, The Dynamic Group, explored and developed oil & gas projects in western Canada. The group owned an aircraft and flew it to Vancouver Island for fishing trips. It was being written off as a not so legit business expense.
The group’s accountants stepped in and told them they had to conduct some sort of exploration in order to justify owning the aircraft. The group’s geologist suggested the idea of attaching a Geiger counter to the aircraft to detect radioactivity from the air.
He further suggested an area that was identified sedimentary structure in Saskatchewan called the Athabasca Basin. Equipped with a Geiger counter, the plane flew a 27,200 line-km survey over the entire basin. From this, 34 radioactive anomalies were deemed high priority targets.
Drilling started in the summer of 1968. The first significant uranium mineralization was intersected in drill hole 67-5, which was drilled to a depth of 648 feet (197.5 meters) and intersected 1.08% U3O8 over a core length of 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) within a sandstone unit.
Rumours of a brand new uranium discovery were circulating. Once the discovery was made public, a staking rush in the basin ensued. Over 50 companies acquired permits & claim blocks totalling appx 120,000 km2 (the size of Michigan state).
By 1970, the company was spending up to $1 million per month (over $8 million in today’s dollars) on its summer exploration program. In 1975 the Rabbit Lake mine was put into production by a successor company which later became Cameco ($CCO). The mine ceased production by 2016.
After many years and 100s of millions of $ in exploration spent since then, the Basin has yielded multiple high-grade uranium discoveries cementing its position as 2nd in the world in identified recoverable resource only behind Kazakhstan (@ $40-$80 / lb U308)
the Basin is home to some of the highest grade uranium deposits globally inc; Cameco’s Cigar Lake & McArthur River mine, Nexgen’s Arrow deposit ($NXE), Denison’s Phoenix & Gryphon deposits, and the world’s highest grade uranium resource is Iso Energy’s Hurricane Project ($ISO)
Interestingly, 1 man was integral and credited for discovering/developing 2 of the above mentioned projects. He’s been called the “Tom Brady of the Athabasca Basin” and is pursuing the next big discovery in the basin through his latest pub co. But that’s a thread for another time
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