Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. (TSXV: PTU) (OTCQB: PTUUF) (“Purepoint” or the “Company”) announced today the results of its winter drill program at the Hook Lake Joint Venture at the Carter Corridor. The Hook Lake Project is a joint venture between Cameco Corporation (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 uranium intercept over 0.4 metres.” said Scott Frostad, VP 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 neighboring 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 ppm U) over 0.4 metres (319.1 to 319.5m) from a 15 metre graphitic shear zone (318 to 333m) below the unconformity (283m);
- In addition, the CRT23-05 mineralization was found to be surrounded by a significant boron halo returning greater than 800 ppm B over 35 metres (305-340m);
- Results were presented to the Joint Venture partners on Monday, May 1, 2023 and 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 Corporation 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.
References:
Eccles, D. R., Kyser, T. K., & Heaman, L. M. (2011). The geology and genesis of the McArthur River uranium deposit. Ore Geology Reviews, 39(3), 134-169.
LeCheminant, A. N., Clark, L. A., & Fitzpatrick, R. J. (1979). Boron haloes surrounding uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada. Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 11(2-3), 307-317.
Roy, C., Halaburda, J., Thomas, D., and Hirsekorn, D. (2006). Millennium deposit—basement-hosted derivative of the unconformity uranium model: Uranium production and raw materials for the nuclear fuel cycle—supply and demand, economics, the environment and energy security: International Atomic Energy Agency Proceedings Series, p. 111–121.
Figure 1: Location Map of 2023 Drill Program
The most recent National Instrument 43-101 compliant technical report on the flagship Hook Lake Joint Venture project can be found at https://purepoint.ca/projects/hook-lake/ – “Technical Report on the Hook Lake Project, Northern Saskatchewan, Canada April 19, 2022”.
Geochemical Assaying
Core sampling is facilitated using a RS-125 Handheld Gamma-Ray Spectrometer that provides a readout of equivalent %K, ppm of U and Th. All drill intercepts are core width and true thickness is yet to be determined.
Core samples are submitted to the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) Geoanalytical Laboratories in Saskatoon. The SRC facility is ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accredited by the Standards Council of Canada (scope of accreditation #537). The samples are analyzed using partial and total digestion inductively coupled plasma methods, for boron by Na2O2 fusion, and for uranium by fluorimetry.
Hook Lake – The Carter Corridor
The Hook Lake JV Project is owned jointly by Cameco Corp. (39.5%), Orano Canada Inc. (39.5%) and Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. (21%) as operator and consists of nine claims totaling 28,598 hectares situated in the southwestern Athabasca Basin. 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 Carter corridor is a long-lived, reactivated graphitic fault zone that lies between the Clearwater Domain granitic intrusive rocks to the west and runs parallel to the Patterson structural corridor to the immediate east. The 25-kilometre strike length of the Carter structural/conductive corridor is almost entirely located within the Hook Lake JV project. 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 319.5m. 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. The gravity low response west of the Carter corridor reflects the geologically younger, Clearwater Domain intrusions. The TGI project leaders (Potter et al., 2020) consider the Clearwater Domain intrusions as being high-heat-producers that warmed and circulated hydrothermal fluids along the structural corridors. Prolonged interaction of oxidized uranium-bearing fluids with basement rocks via reactivated faults is thought to have formed the high-grade uranium deposits.
References:
Boulanger, O., Kiss, F. and Tschirhart, V., (2019). First Vertical Derivative of the Bouguer Gravity Anomaly, Airborne Gravity Survey of the Patterson Lake Area, Athabasca Basin, Alberta and Saskatchewan, Parts of NTS 74-E, F, K and L; Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 8534; Alberta Energy Regulator / Alberta Geological Survey, AER/AGS Map 592; Saskatchewan Geological Survey, Open File Report 2019-2; Scale 1:250 000. https://doi.org/10.4095/313526
Potter, E.G., Tschirhart, V., Powell, J.W., Kelly, C.J., Rabiei, M., Johnstone, D., Craven, J.A., Davis, W.J., Pehrsson, S., Mount, S.M., Chi, G., and Bethune, K.M., (2020). Targeted Geoscience Initiative 5: Integrated multidisciplinary studies of unconformity-related uranium deposits from the Patterson Lake corridor, northern Saskatchewan; Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 615, 37 p.
About Purepoint
Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. (TSXV: PTU) (OTCQB: PTUUF) actively operates an exploration pipeline of 10 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 eight, 100% owned projects with proven uranium rich targets. With an aggressive exploration program underway on multiple projects, Purepoint is emerging as the preeminent uranium explorer in the world’s richest uranium district.
Scott Frostad BSc, MASc, PGeo, Purepoint’s Vice President, Exploration, is the Qualified Person responsible for technical content of this release.
For more information, please contact:
Chris Frostad, President & CEO
Phone: (416) 603-8368
Email: cfrostad@purepoint.ca
For additional information please visit our new website at https://purepoint.ca, our Twitter feed: @PurepointU3O8 or our LinkedIn page @Purepoint-Uranium.
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Disclosure regarding forward-looking statements
This press release contains projections and forward-looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of the Company. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results and the Company’s plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice.
Source: Purepoint Uranium Group Inc.
