Resource update to fast-track Honeymoon restart
25 February 2019
Boss Resources has announced a 30% increase in mineral resources in the area designated to provide the feed material for the future re-start of its Honeymoon in-situ leach uranium project in South Australia.
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Honeymoon (Image: Boss Resources)
The updated JORC-compliant resource for the so-called Restart Area - which includes the Brook Dam, Honeymoon and East Kalkaroo deposits - now stands at 36 million pounds U3O8 (16,329 tU), which is made up 7.6 million pounds U3O8 of measured resources, 19 million pounds of indicated resources and 9.1 million pounds of inferred resources. Global resources for Honeymoon - the Restart Area plus the Jason's and Gould's Dam resources - now stand at 71.6 million pounds U3O8, a 17% increase on the previously reported estimate.
Subiaco, Western Australia-based Boss Resources in July 2018 launched a three-phase restart strategy for Honeymoon, which it acquired from Rosatom subsidiary Uranium One in December 2015. Generation of final input data required for a definitive feasibility study - including the drilling programme to deliver the measured and indicated resource - is central to the first phase of the strategy, which also includes an optimisation programme to identify potential cost savings and/or process improvements and assessments on restarting the existing solvent extraction plant.
Additional drilling, revised interpretations and data management has resulted in about 70% of the previous existing inferred mineral resource being converted to the indicated mineral resource category. This means that the combined indicated and measured mineral resource - the portion of the resource that that can be considered for potential conversion to ore reserve through an updated feasibility study - has increased by 149%, the company said.
The resource announcement "provides further validation that Honeymoon is one of the few uranium projects worldwide positioned to participate in the early stages of a new bull market," Boss Resources Managing Director Duncan Craib said. "A 30% increase in mineral resource, covering a fully permitted mining licence ML6109 which is supported by an export licence, will help fast-track the re-start of uranium production and facilitate off-take arrangements," he added.
In-situ leach production of uranium began at Honeymoon in 2011, and according to Boss Resources the project produced about 335 t of U3O8 equivalent from 2011-2013 - well below its nameplate capacity of 3.3 million pounds U3O8 per year. Uranium One placed Honeymoon on care and maintenance in early 2014, citing low uranium prices and production issues. No further permitting is required to extract uranium within the ML6109 licence area, which Boss says will therefore be the location of the wellfields that initially supply production when operations restart.
Researched and written by World Nuclear News