Purepoint Uranium drills 0.08% U3O8 over 0.4 metres at Hook Lake, Saskatchewan
Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. [PTU-TSXV; PTUUF-OTCQB] reported results of its winter drill program at the Hook Lake joint venture at the Carter corridor, northern Saskatchewan. The Hook Lake project is a joint venture between Cameco Corp. [CCO-TSX; CCJ-NYSE] (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.
“Our latest exploration drill hole on the Carter Corridor, CRT23-05, has uncovered a significant 35-metre-wide boron halo surrounding a 0.08% U3O8 [triuranium octoxide] uranium intercept over 0.4 metres,” said Scott Frostad, vice-president of exploration at Purepoint. “This discovery of boron associated with uranium in the Carter corridor is particularly exciting, as boron is a key pathfinder element for uranium deposits. Our neighbouring basement-hosted Spitfire uranium discovery also displayed significant boron enrichment that was recognized during its discovery phase.”
Highlights: Diamond drill hole CRT23-05 returned an assay of 0.08% U3O8 (671 parts permillion (ppm) U (uranium)) over 0.4 metre (319.1 m to 319.5 m) from a 15-metre graphitic shear zone (318 m to 333 m) below the unconformity (283 m).
In addition, the CRT23-05 mineralization was found to be surrounded by a significant boron halo returning greater than 800 ppm B (boron) over 35 metres (305m to 340 m);Plans for follow-up drilling are now being developed.
Boron – a tracer element for uranium mineralization
The discovery of uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin using boron as a pathfinder was first made at the Key Lake deposit in the late 1970s by a joint venture between Uranerz Exploration and Mining, Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, and Eldorado Nuclear, and is one of the largest and highest-grade uranium deposits in the world. Boron enrichment is prominent in the sandstone column above the McArthur River uranium deposit, which is the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposit.
The Millennium deposit, a basement hosted deposit, was discovered in 2000 by Cameco and partners, that was aided by using boron geochemistry as a vectoring tool. The recognition of the extent of the sandstone and basement alteration combined with anomalous uranium and boron chemistry was key in prioritizing the southern portion of the B1 conductive trend, which ultimately led to this discovery.
The Hook Lake JV Project with Purepoint as operator consists of nine claims totaling 28,598 hectares situated in the southwestern Athabasca Basin.
The winter 2023 diamond drill program completed six holes along the Carter Corridor for a total 2,710 metres. The most northern hole drilled, CRT23-05, drilled the unconformity at 283m and intersected 0.08% U3O8 (671 ppm U) over 0.4 metres from 319.1 to 319.5 metres. The uranium mineralization is associated with 15 metres of graphitic shearing (318-333m), 5 metres of strong clay alteration (333-338m), and a 35-metre-wide boron halo (305-340m).
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 operates an exploration pipeline of 10 advanced projects in the 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 eight, 100%-owned projects with proven uranium rich targets.