Labrador uranium draws juniors

Two companies better known for their efforts in gold exploration — Fronteer Development Group (FRG-T) and Altius Minerals (ALS-V) — have reopened the search for uranium in Labrador’s Central Mineral Belt.

An equal joint venture between the companies, controlling a 293-sq.-km land package in eight blocks north of Lake Melville, recently completed a reconnaissance program, and the results indicate that some previously known uranium showings in the region also carry significant gold, copper and silver grades. The metal association is typical of iron-oxide, copper-gold deposits similar to the Olympic Dam uranium-copper deposit in South Australia.

The property package includes blocks covering the Michelin uranium deposit, about 150 km northeast of Goose Bay, and the Post Hill uranium deposit, about 40 km northeast of Michelin. Both properties saw prospecting and surface sampling in the past field season.

The Michelin deposit, discovered in 1969 by prospector Leslie Michelin and drilled off in the 1970s by Brinco Mining, has a resource of 6.2 million tonnes grading 0.13% U3O8. Accessory copper is absent in the deposit, but the joint venture’s sampling just to the north returned grades of 1.09% and 0.72% copper, with 20.5 and 26.5 grams silver per tonne.

The deposit is complex, with uranium mineralization occurring in stratabound zones in volcanic rocks, in high-grade pitchblende veins, and in breccia zones; all those styles of mineralization are known in iron oxide-copper-gold deposits. Hematite and albite alteration, also typical of these deposits, is prominent at Michelin.

At Post Hill, where Brinco defined a resource of 550,000 tonnes at 0.16% U3O8, recent sampling near the deposit revealed a number of gold-copper-silver showings associated with the uranium mineralization. Copper grades ranged from 1% to 3%, silver grades, from 20 to 80 grams per tonne, and gold grades, from a quarter of a gram to just below a gram per tonne.

One of the Post Hill samples also contained 1.76% molybdenum, suggesting similarities to the Point Aillik uranium deposit, near Makkovik on the coast.

The joint venture also examined the Melody Hill boulder occurrence, where the bedrock source of a 1.2-km boulder train discovered in the 1970s has still not been found. Prospecting unearthed strongly altered granite and felsic volcanic boulders with U3O8 grades of 28.2% and 11.9%, results that closely matched grades found in boulders by previous workers.

Altius and Fronteer plan geophysical surveys for the 2004 field season, to be followed up by geology and geochemistry to define drill targets.