Purepoint Uranium discovers new uranium zone at Hook Lake, Saskatchewan
Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. [TSXV-PTU; OTCQB-PTUUF] has completed its winter drill program at the Hook Lake joint venture at the Carter corridor, Athabasca basin, Saskatchewan. The Hook Lake project is a joint venture between Cameco Corp. [TSX-CCO; NYSE-CCJ] (39.5%), Orano Canada Inc. (39.5%) and Purepoint (21%) and lies on trend with high-grade uranium discoveries, including Fission Uranium’s Triple R deposit and NexGen’s Arrow deposit.
“This year’s drill program ended with a discovery of 0.9 metres of 0.29% U3O8, including 0.3 metres of 0.68% U3O8, associated with a major structure intersected by hole CRT24-10,” said Scott Frostad, Vice President Exploration at Purepoint. “Encouragingly, the basement hosted uranium mineralization is within an altered breccia matrix that borders a 10-metre wide graphitic shear. All the 2024 holes intersected anomalous radioactivity and the results continue to show the extensive 20-kM conductive structural zone known as the Carter Corridor remains highly prospective for an economic uranium discovery.”
Highlights: CRT24-10, the most northern drilled hole of the program, intersected a 13-metre wide zone of altered brecciation and shearing that returned 0.29% U3O8 over 0.9 metres (at a true vertical depth of 375 metres), including 0.68% U3O8 over 0.3 metres.
CRT24-08A, a 200-metre step-out from CRT23-05 towards the northeast, encountered a 28-metre wide graphitic shear zone with clay alteration and local brecciation between 330 and 358 metres. Mineralization was intersected within a breccia zone that returned peak radioactivity of 7,370 cps and averaged 2,760 cps over 1.4 metres.
All the 2024 drill holes were collared northeast of CRT23-05 that intersected 0.08% U3O8 over 0.4 metres within a 15-metre wide graphitic shear zone with local brecciation and intense clay alteration.
All 2024 drill holes encountered elevated radioactivity. With the exception of the expediated CRT24-10 analyses, all assays are still pending.
The 2024 diamond drill program was completed in four holes and one lost hole for a total of 2,332 metres to test the newly identified Lightning Zone of the Carter Corridor.
CRT24-07 was collared approximately 800 metres northeast of CRT23-05 and the unconformity was intersected at 325 metres. An average reading of 1,040 cps over 0.7 metres with a peak reading of 1,660 cps was returned between 334.8 and 335.5 metres. The hole was completed at 461 metres.
CRT24-08A was collared approximately 200 metres northeast of CRT23-05 and 600 metres southwest of CRT24-07. The unconformity was intersected at 299 metres. A 28-metre wide graphitic shear zone with clay alteration and local brecciation, was hosted by diorite gneiss between 330 and 358 metres. A brecciation zone returned an average reading of 2,760 cps over 1.4 metres with a peak reading of 7,370 cps. A 19 metre wide zone of brecciated graphitic diorite gneiss with weak shearing was then encountered between 393 and 412 metres. The hole was completed at 527 metres.
CRT24-09 was collared 50 metres behind CRT24-08A on the same section line and the unconformity was intersected at 305 metres. Three graphitic shear zones, ranging between 6 and 15 metres in width and hosted by sericitized granodiorite, were encountered between 470 and 531 metres. Although the downhole gamma probe returned anomalous radioactivity from the hole, the radioactivity is not associated with the structures intersected and may be mainly attributed to thorium. The hole was completed at 581 metres.
CRT24-10 was collared approximately 1,600 m northeast of hole CRT23-05 and the unconformity was intersected at 354 metres. A major structure, consisting of an 8-metre wide zone of brecciated and altered graphitic diorite gneiss followed by 5 metres of strong graphitic shearing, was encountered starting at 430 metres. The brecciated zone hosted 0.29 per cent U3O8 over 0.9 metres from 430.6 to 431.5 metres and included 0.68 per cent U3O8 over 0.3 metres. The hole was completed at 539 metres.
The Hook Lake JV Project is considered one of the highest quality uranium exploration projects in the Athabasca Basin due to its location along the prospective Patterson Lake trend and the relatively shallow depth to the unconformity.
The Patterson Lake area was recently flown by an airborne gravity survey (Boulanger, Kiss and Tschirhart, 2019) that was funded by the Targeted Geoscience Initiative (TGI), a collaborative federal geoscience program. The gravity results show the southern portion of the Carter corridor as being associated with the same gravity high response as the Triple R and Arrow uranium deposits.
Purepoint Uranium Group operates an exploration pipeline of nine advanced projects in Canada’s Athabasca Basin. In addition to its flagship joint venture project at Hook Lake with partners Cameco and Orano and a second joint venture with Cameco at Smart Lake, Purepoint also holds seven, 100%-owned projects with proven uranium rich targets and one VHMS project that is adjacent and on trend with Foran’s McIlvena Bay project, currently optioned to Foran Corp.