The changing attitude towards uranium and nuclear energy as a clean energy source continues to gain momentum. Despite its previous bad press, this renewable energy source is set to play a critical role in the global energy mix.
Today, nuclear energy due to improved technology and better safety systems, is clean, reliable, and yes, safe.
Terra Uranium Ltd (ASX:T92)’s Andrew Vigar knows as much and is confident that one day soon the fear surrounding the use of uranium and nuclear energy will transition to fearlessness.
In fact, it’s already happening. As governments scramble to hit decarbonisation targets, uranium is in their energy mix.
Vigar has seen the ebb and flow of that transition. From the disasters, Chornobyl and Fukushima, to the innovation that is moulding prevailing attitudes including the introduction of small module reactors (SMRs) and solution mining.
“It's a difficult element to work with. It’s a dangerous element. So, we must have protocols, but I think if I had to put my finger on one major change it has been solution mining.”
Solution mining, otherwise known as in-situ recovery, involves leaving the ore where it is in the ground and recovering the metals from it by dissolving them and pumping the pregnant solution to the surface where they can be recovered.
It means there is little surface disturbance and no tailings or waste rock generated.
Solution mining is much cleaner than conventional mining, which involves removing mineralised rock (ore) from the ground, breaking it up and treating it to remove the metals being sought.
It is the main method of extraction used for many years for shallow roll-front style uranium deposits and is now being tested with great success on hard rock.
“It is a more classic style in situ. In a roll-front deposit we operate at relatively shallow depths, and we pump some solutions in, dissolve the uranium, take it out, and there's very little disturbance on the surface.”
The mining and exploration veteran believes the development of solution mining technology for hard-rock deposits will phase out big open cut mines in the longer term with little disturbance to the surface of the land.
Vigar and the tight knit team at his new company Terra Uranium will take a solution mining approach to its uranium interests in the Athabasca Basin, Canada.
We’ll get to that shortly, but first let’s look at how Vigar came to be exploring for uranium in Canada.
In this article:
- The boy from Broken Hill
- Relationships build trust
- The uranium solution
- T92’s assets
- Looking ahead
Broken Hill is one of Australia’s most revered frontier mining towns.
The town is so famous, you can discover its history through geology exhibits at the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum.
Interesting fact: Broken Hill has more trucks and sets of traffic lights underground than it does on the surface.
That’s the environment Andrew Vigar grew up in.
The son of a grazier. The nephew of a miner. Surrounded by minerals around the property and an old mine opposite the house.
“My mother threatened us not to go anywhere near it. But that just made us keener,” Vigar says of his surrounds.
Suffice to say, mining was in his blood from an early age.
“It's a heritage,” he says.
Vigar spent some years in the outback NSW town before his family moved to the Gold Coast in the early 1960s. The nearest town was Brisbane, where he ended up doing two degrees: geology at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in the mid-1970s, and an incomplete Master of Science, Geostatistics at the University of Queensland in the early 1990s.
“It's a strange combination, because geologists are probably the least mathematical people you'll ever come across,” Vigar explains.
“I remember one of the reasons I chose geology was because it didn't have any math in it. But math is a very interesting and intriguing thing. It's a bit like exploration to some extent, when you get into it there's all these sorts of interesting things you can do like probability and risk analysis, which is great for exploration discovery but goes into other areas such as banking as well.”
In between degrees, Vigar was building a career. It just happened to be a terrible time for the mining industry.
Australia was going through a major recession and hardly any mines were operating.
“Coal mining was just starting in Queensland, metals and gold prices were very low and there were only a very few jobs. I remember writing 100 letters in late-1977 looking for any sort of a position as a graduate geologist. And funnily enough, I got a letter back from a company in San Francisco named Utah Development (which later became part of BHP (ASX:BHP)).
“They were a very dynamic and well-run exploration company and were heavily involved in the early days of coal exploration in Queensland.”
The problem, at the time, was the company had no jobs in geology. So, Vigar became a field hand.
“I was riding motorbikes around the bush and collecting samples in far north Queensland in my first year with Utah. I thought that was fantastic and then about a year later they were looking for a junior geologist, so I got the position and stayed with them for several years.”
At the same time BHP came knocking on Utah’s door, Vigar received a job offer to go work in Fiji at the famous Vatukoula Gold Mine on a tropical island – what more could you ask for?
It was in 1980 in Fiji that he found his feet as an exploration manager, and later mine geologist and surface operations manager, working with the local geologists on a very long life mine that started in 1935. Together they formulated structural models and exploration models and had huge exploration success.
The company was purchased by Western Mining Corporation, which Vigar says was one of the two great companies he worked with in those earlier years. He transferred to Kalgoorlie with WMC in 1985 looking for gold around Leonora.
“They were geology driven. Driven by excellence. And had terrific people to work with. I loved my time there.”
Vigar benefited from those companies’ dedication to encouraging youth into the industry and creating a well-rounded work experience encompassing all facets of exploration and mining.
“You can't explore for an ore body unless you know what one looks like,” he says of that gained experience.
Vigar came to learn all facets of the mining business and how all sections should work together including geologists, geochemists, geophysics, structural and environmental people.
“I encourage all young people, even if they've focused on exploration, to spend a few years in the mines.”
Teamwork is one of the core set of values Vigar carried through his time at Drummond Gold, at the highly successful K92 Mining, where he was a foundation director, through his time with consulting business SRK Consulting and Mining Associates, as a partner at Petram Capital and as a Director of Alligator Energy, and Terra Uranium.
Relationships build trust
A good team is built on trust and the team at T92 trust each other implicitly.
It’s a small team, but effective. Along with Vigar, geologist Troy Boisjoli has 15 years of proven success in uranium mining behind him. He started his career with the largest miner in the Athabasca – Cameco Corporation (TSX:CCO). Dr Kylie Prendergast and Doug Endahl are also highly experienced directors and geologists. Mike McClelland directs the exploration team based in Saskatoon and has 25 years of industry experience, the last 12 with BHP and then Cameco. Geophysics manager Kyle Patterson has 15 years’ experience, geochemistry manager Dr Tom Kotzer has 25 years behind him and served as chief geochemist in Cameco Exploration integrating geochemical, geological, mineralogical, and high-grade uranium mineralisation within high priority geologic trends.
This is a solid team with high expectations of themselves and each other. A team that can move quickly – and has moved quickly – to achieve its stated milestones.
Since listing in September 2022, the company has completed a successful geophysical survey and presented its initial uranium findings from the 100% owned Pasfield and Parker projects in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the Global Uranium Conference in Adelaide on November 10. It has also been granted exploration permits for three years on its Athabasca ground and in February began its 100-hole maiden Athabasca winter drilling program targeting major deposits.
“With a small company like T92, we wanted to get up and running quite quickly. So, when Darryl Clark and I started (Darryl has since left to join IsoEnergy), we said, right, we need an experienced team who not only know what they're doing but have worked together before. It's relationships, it's people that build success. Everybody has their little quirks and idiosyncrasies, but it helps if you don't have to go through a learning process with each other because you already know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
The Terra Uranium team has made an immediate impact and it comes at just the right time.
The uranium solution
Vigar has seen a notable shift in attitudes towards not only uranium mining, but mining in general.
This shift is occurring for several reasons including solution mining and technological advancements.
As World Nuclear reports, “nuclear fission reactors produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation. But even when accounting for total carbon emissions (such as in the building of a nuclear power plant or solar panels) they have lower carbon emissions than many other renewables.”
Conversely, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that nuclear operates at full capacity 93.5% of the time, making it the most reliable energy source by far.
Source: World Nuclear.
Meanwhile, spot prices are elevating with Trading Economics stating, “Uranium futures approached $50 per pound in January 2023, the highest mark in nearly six weeks, as volatile energy markets and carbon-cutting goals continued to support demand for nuclear fuel.”
The fear around nuclear is dissipating and as it does international governments are also making moves.
The EU and the US are now classing nuclear energy in the same category as wind, solar and hydro.
France and Japan are also big movers.
Japan has recovered from Fukushima and learned its lessons.
NPR reports: “Under the new policy, Japan will maximise the use of existing reactors by restarting as many of them as possible and prolonging the operating life of aging ones beyond a 60-year limit. The government also pledged to develop next-generation reactors.”
The nuclear power program of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is South Korea’s first sale of its nuclear technology.
That brings us to the Athabasca basin, which is well placed to service several regions, not least North America.
T92’s assets
T92 holds a 100% interest in 20 claims covering a total of 917 square kilometres forming the HawkRock, Parker Lake and the Pasfield Lake Projects in the Cable Bay Shear Zone (CBSZ) on the eastern side of the Athabasca Basin, north-eastern Saskatchewan, Canada.
Winter Night Skies at T92 Base Camp on Pasfield Lake.
The projects are some 80 kilometres to the west/northwest of multiple operating large uranium mills, mines and known deposits. The CBSZ is a major structural zone with known uranium mineralisation but limited exploration.
“It's one thing to find a deposit, it's another thing to put it into production. We felt that in the Athabasca, we had both of those things due to its super prospectivity and proximity to permitted mills with excess capacity.
“Mike quickly targeted areas that are a little bit deeper in the basin but have known mineralisation but little work since the 1990s. The rationale is that the introduction of in situ recovery makes mining recovery at those sorts of depths not a problem,” Vigar tells Proactive.
“The prospectivity was always known, but people had said, ‘it's a little bit too deep. We won't look there’. That's changed, but you also you need to be able to process it. The East Athabasca basin has three licensed processing facilities, which is unique in the uranium world in such a small area. Those facilities are underutilised; there's only one of them running at capacity. So, there's plenty of capacity there as well as potential partners in operators Orano, Cameco and Dennison.”
Given all that, Vigar believes T92 could put a discovery into production relatively quickly and feed into the growing need for uranium as a clean energy source.
Looking ahead
Vigar’s goals over the next 12 months are tied to the company’s.
T92 seems to have its pedal perpetually to the metal and shareholders can expect a raft of news throughout the year, including results from the current drill program, a diamond drill program to follow, follow-up from geophysics surveys and later in the year diamond drilling, which Vigar refers to as “the truth machine”.
“Our problem, I guess, is we've got more targets than we expected. We're running a classic winnowing-down process.”
That’s a good problem to have and it includes a 15-kilometre long, major conductor at the Parker prospect which Vigar says is “as big as anything in the Athabasca”.
The key thing to note is the company is looking for a major target within its 100% owned properties.
The company is drilling from winter through to the summer.
“We're targeting a major discovery, and if we make that discovery, it'll be 100% ours. No royalties, no earnings, no buybacks, just us, which leaves us and our shareholders in a very strong position for the next step.
Of course, it is still early stages, and a discovery is yet to be made, but for a company that was founded less than a year ago, T92 has made exceptional progress and it’s all down to a tight knit, symaptico, highly experienced team that recognises that changing times requires swift action and “you just have to have a go”.
In other words, the traits that shaped the boy from Broken Hill early in his career.
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