Wide interval of high-grade at Fission’s Patterson Lake

Fission Energy (FIS-V) jumped 23.94% to 44¢ a share with 1.75 million shares changing hands after the company reported drilling at the Patterson Lake South project in northern Saskatchewan intersected a shallow 6.0-metre interval of high-grade mineralization with visible pitchblende in veins (up to 21 cm wide), blebs and flecks.

Patterson Lake South is a 50-50 joint-venture project with Alpha Minerals (AMW-V), formerly ESO Uranium Corp., about 50 km south of the Shea Creek discoveries of UEX Corp. (UEX-T). Areva Fission is the operator of the 31,039-hectare joint-venture project.

Management reported that the mineralization in drill hole PLS12-022 is at a shallow depth in basement rocks, and noted that the interval, which is strongly radioactive, occurs within a broader 21-metre interval of moderate radioactivity which breaches the unconformity and extends downward into the Archean basement. The drill hole is still in progress.

Fission’s chief geologist and chief operating officer, Ross McElroy, said in a prepared statement that the latest results confirm that there is potential for the project to “host a significant high-grade uranium deposit,” adding that the company was “particularly excited by the size and scope” of the discovery. McElroy also pointed out that the project lies in an underexplored region on the margin of the Athabasca Basin.

The uncomformity with the Archean basement and probable Devonian sandstone was encountered at a vertical depth of 59.53 metres and elevated radioactivity continues in the upper basement drill core to 78.5 metres, the company said. The discovery hole was about 3.8 km northeast of the high-grade boulder field, where assays last year returned up to 39.6% U3O8.

Fission and Alpha Minerals predecessor, ESO Uranium, launched the joint-venture project in January 2008. In December the companies completed a MEGATEM Magnetic-EM airborne survey to identify ground targets, and in October 2009 the partners staked more ground. In June 2011, the joint-venture team discovered a high-grade uranium boulder field with a total of 74 radioactive boulders. Last year, trenching discovered another 49 radioactive boulders with nineteen of them producing “off-scale” radioactive readings. Since then the boulder field has been traced for a distance of 5 kilometres in length and up to 0.9 kilometre in width.

In Toronto at presstime, Fission was trading at 43.5¢ within a 52-week range of 33.5¢ -$1.09. The junior has 124.5 million shares, fully diluted.