F3 Uranium eyes potential third major discovery

Good things come in threes could apply to F3 Uranium’s (TSV: FUU) Athabasca basin discoveries in Saskatchewan and the people behind them.

Since 2010, a trio of its team members have helped discover the Waterbury Lake and Patterson Lake South (PLS) deposits in the basin, projects later acquired by Paladin Energy (ASX, TSX: PDN) and Denison Mines (TSX: DML; NYSE: DNN), who have become C$1.5-billion-plus market cap uranium players. Strong results this spring from F3’s Broach Lake target, about 700 km north of Saskatoon, suggest the team might have found a third.

“Hardly anybody’s found one [big deposit], F3 CEO Dev Randhawa told The Northern Miner in an interview in Toronto. “Nobody’s found two. We found three. That just goes to the ability of the technical team.”

Uranium explorers have over the last 18 months been riding demand for nuclear as interest grows in zero-emissions energy to power artificial intelligence servers.

‘Where’s the fire?’

Broach Lake, located in the basin’s west about 12 km south of F3’s high-grade JR zone and north of Paladin’s Triple R deposit, is an area with “smoke,” Randhawa said.

“It’s a term geologists use when they haven’t found it yet. So, where’s the fire? The next step is to vector in and find that,” said Randhawa, who in 2013 was named one of The Northern Miner‘s Mining Persons of the Year, along with Fission Uranium’s president Ross McElroy.

Drillhole PLN25-205 at Broach intersected 33 metres of radioactivity, including a 0.56-metre interval registering more than 10,000 counts per second (cps) by spectrometer readings from 325 metres depth, F3 reported in mid-April. One 23.5-metre interval encountered 37,700 cps from 384 metres depth.

“This discovery is particularly meaningful as it is within the Clearwater Domain – a geological package predominantly thought to consist of intrusive rocks and historically considered less prospective for uranium mineralization,” Sam Hartmann, vice-president for exploration, said in a release. Hartmann worked on the Waterbury Lake and PLS finds as part of the geology team with Fission Energy and chief geologist with Fission Uranium.

‘Proven’ track record

“F3’s technical team has yet again proven their ability to unlock and define novel high-grade uranium domains within the western Athabasca Basin,” Haywood Capital Markets mining analyst Marcus Giannini said in a note.

Drilling in March at Broach intersected six zones of radioactivity ranging between 300 cps and 720 cps over a 90-metre interval in hole PLN25-202.

Finding the structure

But the key to making sure Broach is more than just a potential high-grade pod is connecting it with a larger structure, Randhawa said.

He cited drill results from December at JR – adjacent to Broach – that cut 7.5 metres at 30.9% uranium oxide (U3O8), including an ultra-high grade core with 4.5 metres of 50.1% U3O8.

The high-grade core “indicates potential for a major new Athabasca discovery,” SCP Resource Finance mining analyst Justin Chan said in a note then.

“When you start talking about mergers and acquisitions, we need to show that we have more than one pod now, and hopefully this Broach is one of them,” Randhawa said. “If you look at Triple R, we found very little bits, then massive amounts. It was just like pearls on a necklace, because [uranium] conductors generally tend to be straight. We need to show it’s a system. So that’s what a bigger company would secure. We need to acquire it.”

Deposit finders

Randhawa initially helmed Fission Energy, which discovered the high-grade J zone at Waterbury in the basin’s west in 2010. Denison acquired Fission for C$70 million in 2013. Under Fission Energy, the team also found PLS’ Triple R deposit, one of the basin’s largest uranium resources.

Randhawa also led spinout Fission Uranium, which Paladin acquired along with PLS last December in a C$1.1 billion deal. F3 president Raymond Ashley worked as vice-president exploration for Fission Energy.

“Real estate is ‘location, location, location’” Randhawa said. “Rick Rule and other smart people will tell you that when it comes to junior mining, it’s management, management, management. That’s where our big advantage is over a lot of other companies, having management that knows how to monetize, but also knows how to find it first, then cut deals with it.”