The Hatchet Lake property is subject to a joint venture agreement between Virginia and Denison, each holding a 50% interest with Denison as the operator. This property consists of 11 claims totaling 39,930 hectares within the relatively shallow, northeast portion of the Athabasca basin.
It is located 20km north of Points North Landing, and 17km north of the McClean Lake Mill owned by Areva-Denison-OURD. Several winter roads are present on the claims, allowing relatively economical drill access and support.
The Hatchet Lake property is underlain by sandstones of the Athabasca group, which unconformably overlie highly deformed and metamorphosed rocks of the Mudjatik and Wollaston Domains. The target is an unconformity-type uranium deposit and/or a basement-hosted deposit at or near the contact between the Athabasca sandstones and underlying basement rocks.
The Hatchet property includes faults and conductors similar to those that host nearby unconformity-related uranium deposits and prospects such as Jeb (Areva-Denison-OURD), Dawn Lake and La Rocque Lake (Cameco-Areva-JCU), Moonlight (Areva-Denison-JCU), Midwest (Areva-Denison-OURD) and Roughrider (Hathor-Terra).
The depth to the unconformity at the Tuning Fork target is 100mt to 140mt, shallow enough for open pit mining. The drill program is designed to test a 3800mt long extension of the conductor system which hosts the Top Creek and Moonlight uranium targets on the adjacent Wolly property (Areva-Denison-JCU).
The Moonlight uranium zone is located 3.5km southeast of the Tuning Fork area and is reported to have returned drill results of up to 1.78% U3O8 over 4.75mt in sandstone. Historic wide-spaced drilling of the Tuning Fork conductor has identified a locally faulted and sheared, twinned pair of graphitic-pyritic pelite units, spaced 40mt – 50mt apart. Weak uranium enrichment and illite, limonite and hematite alteration are present along the conductor.
In the Richardson-Crooked Lake area to the north, the joint venture plans line cutting and ground geophysical surveys to better define the location of a six kilometre-long conductor system with uranium and base metal enrichment associated with sulphide mineralization and alteration in sandstone and basement rocks. The unconformity in this area varies between 0 and 120mt depth.
The company said that the Hatchet property is highly prospective for unconformity uranium deposits based on the host rocks, alteration, numerous faulted conductor trends, and the shallow depth to the unconformity.
