CanAlaska launches $10 million uranium program
CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. [CVV-TSXV, CVVUF-OTCQB, DH7N-Frankfurt] on Tuesday mobilizing drill crews as part of a $10 million 2023 program on the West McArthur joint venture project in the Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan
West McArthur is a joint venture with Cameco Corp. [CCO-TSX, CCJ-NYSE]. CanAlaska is the operator and holds a 79.4% interest in the project.
Drilling will focus on advancing the Pike Zone uranium discovery which is located 20 kilometres southwest of Cameco and Orano Canada Inc.’s McArthur River uranium mine. The Pike Zone, discovered in July of 2022, lies along a structural corridor that hosts the company’s 42 Zone as well as the nearby Fox Lake uranium deposit (68 million pounds of U308 at 7.99%), immediately to the northeast and discovered by Cameco and Orano.
Drilling at the Pike Zone in 2022 returned multiple intersections of high-grade basement-hosted uranium mineralization. Highlights include hole WMA067 which returned 2.4% U308 over 9.0 metres from 906.5 metres and hole WMA072-3, which returned several high-grade intersections over a 12.6-metre-wide zone highlighted by 3.98% U308 over 2.3 metres from 845.9 metres, including a sub-interval of 25.40% U308 over 0.3 metres from 846.4 metres.
To date, uranium mineralization has been intersected between 20 and 100 metres vertically below the unconformity.
With cash of approximately $18 million, CanAlaska said it is fully funded to complete it s 2023 exploration programs, and will fund the 2023 West McArthur program entirely. The company expects to complete the winter portion of the 2023 exploration program in early April.
Meanwhile, the company is preparing for its first drilling program on the Key Extension project, located in the southeastern Athabasca region near the Key Lake mine and mill complex. The 2023 Key Extension drill program, which is expected to begin in early February, will focus on exploration of newly defined targets generated through a series of geophysical programs completed in 2022.
CanAlaska is doing this work under an option agreement with Durama Enterprises Ltd., a private company which has granted CanAlaska the right earn a 100% interest in the project.
Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin, the world’s richest uranium region. In 2020, the Athabasca Basin accounted for approximately 8.1% of the global primary uranium production.
CanAlaska is focused on finding unconformity-related deposits, the most common of the 14 major categories of uranium deposit types. Notable examples include Key Lake, Cluff Lake, Rabbit Lake, McClean Lake, McArthur River and Cigar Lake deposits – with some of the ore around 20% uranium.
An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface, separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. Basement-hosted deposits are spatially associated with and closely related to, unconformity uranium-occurrences.
On January 9, 2023, CanAlaska shares closed at 44 cents and currently trade in a 52-week range of 73 cents and 26.5 cents.