Denison Mines, an intermediate uranium producer, declared that it has commenced the 2012 winter drill program at its Wheeler River project, which is situated in the Northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin region. In addition to this Wheeler River project, the company has planned five more drilling programs in the Athabasca Basin.
For the year 2012, the Wheeler River Joint Venture has sanctioned a Cdn$6.8 million budget, which will comprise 28,000 m of drilling in about 60 holes. The project has begun with two drills, which are presently active on site. The project will focus on studying a number of local targets that were discovered based on geophysics and significant drilling. It will also target the definition drilling in Zone A, specifically the Zone A Extension and the definition drilling in Zone B.
The drilling program, which was started in summer 2011, focused mainly on Zone A and proved quite successful in extending the Phoenix deposit’s estimated resources with the identification of the Zone A Extension. This extension is actually a width increase of the mineralization found at the Zone A’s north end and is construed as a thickening of fault slices in an east-southeast route. The mineralization has shifted into the basement stratigraphy along these thickened thrusts.
Denison owns 60% of the Wheeler River project, and its partners include JCU (Canada) Exploration Company Limited which has 10% stake and Cameco Corporation with 30% stake.
The final assay results from the 2011 drilling program again confirm the previously reported probe results. The chemical analyses were a mix of assay and geochemical methods and were completed by SRC Geoanalytical Laboratories of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Denison and its partners, apart from the Wheeler River drill project, have planned to finish the drill programs on the Ahenakew Lake project, McClean Lake project, Bell Lake project, Hatchet Lake project, and Moore Lake project.
The McClean Lake Joint Venture’s participants include AREVA Resources Canada and OURD (Canada); in the Bell Lake and Moore Lake Joint Ventures include JNR Resources and in the Hatchet Lake Joint Venture includes Virginia Energy Resources.
Source: http://www.denisonmines.com/