Power Metal completes phase one work at Athabasca Basin

The AIM-traded firm had announced in October that its phase one work programme was underway, and that additional ground surrounding its Tait Hill property had been acquired.

It said on Friday that the phase one work programme was now complete, with a total of 20 rock samples collected from Tait Hill, Thibaut Lake and Clearwater.

All samples had been submitted for expedited turnaround at the Saskatchewan Research Council laboratory in Saskatoon, and would be subject to a uranium-exploration analytical package, including uranium, various base and trace metals, and a suite of rare-earth elements.

An RS-125 spectrometer was employed for the programme, which the company described as a portable handheld gamma-ray survey device which measures the radioactivity of the sample being tested in counts per second (CPS).

Several outcrops were analysed from all three properties, some which ran as high as 65,535 CPS, which represents the upper limits of the device.

All rock samples collected were also analysed on-site with 17 out of 20 samples returning more than 1,000 CPS, 11 out of 20 samples returning over 2,500 CPS, and an individual sample high of 35,000 CPS.

Power Metal said all samples were logged by an experienced geologist as being variably hematite- and clay-altered granitic to gneissic rocks, with varying amounts of urananite mineralisation, as well as yellow-orange oxide coatings.

An additional 1,129-hectare claim was staked to provide further coverage over several uranium-rich lakes surrounding the company's Tait Hill uranium property, where 308,000 kilograms of uranium with a value of $25.6m was calculated by the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, following a detailed lake-sediment drilling programme completed in 1980.

“Power Metal has embarked on a campaign to build significant uranium portfolio exposure for our investors,” said chief executive officer Paul Johnson.

“We started this campaign several months ago with the initial staking of our land package surrounding the prolific Athabasca Basin located in Northern Saskatchewan, and continue to build our uranium exploration project portfolio there, as you will see with the new ground secured today.”

Johnson said field observations from phase one exploration were “encouraging”, with the company looking forward to the receipt of assay results, which were being expedited as rush assays.

“More work is being done to review additional uranium opportunities and we are optimistic of success in this regard.”

At 1621 GMT, shares in Power Metal Resources were up 1.82% at 1.68p.