Energy Fuels Locks Bahia Project for Rare Earths and Uranium in Brazil
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- Category: Tungsten's News
- Published on Thursday, 02 June 2022 15:38
Energy Fuels Inc. has locked up rare earths and uranium for the Bahia project, as the company recently announced it has entered into binding agreements (Purchase Agreements) for the acquisition of 17 mineral concessions totaling 15,089.71 hectares of Bahia Project between the towns of Prado and Caravelas in the State of Bahia, Brazil.
Based on extensive historical drilling, it is tentatively concluded that the Bahia Project hosts significant quantities of heavy minerals, including monazite, which will feed Energy Fuels' rapidly emerging rare earth element (REE) supply chain in the United States. The Bahia project has not been previously mined, but several concessions have valid exploration and mining licenses from Brazil’s government. As a result, the Company believes it can bring the Bahia project into production in the future.
The Bahia Project is a prominent heavy mineral sands ("HMS") deposit with over 3,300 vertical historical exploration drill holes drilled to date, showing significant concentrations of titanium (ilmenite and rutile), zircon (zircon), and REE (monazite). Importantly, these mineralizations are located at or near surface, meaning that these materials are expected to be relatively easy to recover using standard, low-cost sand mining techniques, including the use of front-end loaders, excavators and/or dredges.
Due to the drilling methods historically used, drilling conducted to date has averaged only 5.86 m deep, the average depth to the water table in the area. The comapny' primary drill target is monazite, which contains rare earths and uranium. Preliminary assay data indicates that the monazite sands contained in the HMS concentrate range between 0.62% and 12.82% and that the monazite is expected to contain uranium comparable to typicaldeposits on the Colorado Plateau.
Energy Fuels plans to conduct extensive exploration work over the next six months to further define and quantify the HMS resource at the Bahia project.
Based on a preliminary historical resource estimate, the Company believes that the Bahia Project has the potential to supply approximately 3,000-10,000 tonnes per year (depending on production rates) of monazite sand concentrate containing approximately 1,500-5,000 tonnes per year of total rare earth oxides ("TREO") to the plant, potentially for several decades.
Mark S. Chalmers, President and Chief Executive Officer of the company, said, "This is another key step in the company's evolution into a major global rare earths producer. We are actively seeking to expand our supply of monazite sand."
The Bahia deposit has significant potential to produce high-quality ilmenite, rutile, and zircon products in addition to monazite. It has the potential to provide a low-cost source of monazite feedstock.
Energy Fuels is a leading uranium mining company in the United States, supplying U3O8 to major nuclear facilities. The company also produces vanadium from some of its projects and is ramping up commercial-scale REE carbonate production.
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