Aussie firm starts drilling for Uranium

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Friday January 22, 2010 00:00

Impact said in a statement on Tuesday that the Lekobolo drill targets collectively cover an area of about 140  square km within which there were numerous clusters of elevated uranium-in-soil values. 

The drill programme is anticipated to finish within a few weeks, and a down-hole radiometric survey to measure uranium in the completed drill holes is due to start as soon as the logger becomes available.

Assay results from this second programme are expected by late March.

The Lekobolo prospect is one of five priority targets identified by Impact on the basis of the widespread surface uranium anomalism in calcretes and sandstones, backed by regional mapping, ground reconnaissance work and sampling. These other four priority targets are Lekobolo, Sua, Kodibeleng, Ikongwe and Shoshong.

Impact is undertaking exploration in southern Africa as a joint venture with the world's second-largest platinum producer, Impala Platinum (Implats). In its quarterly report for the period ending December, Impact stated that the venture will operate for a minimum period of two years. Implats will fund project generation work with up to $400,000 a year. Impact's ground-holding in Botswana comprises 27,000 square kilometres of granted prospecting licences that cover the prospective Karoo Group sedimentary rocks and the younger Kalahari Group sediments and calcrete.

Soil surveying at Lekobolo comprised 945 samples taken at 500 metre intervals along lines one kilometre apart and analysed for uranium by the MMI-M partial digest method at a laboratory in Perth.

The company says the uranium-in-soil results at Lekobolo are significant and support the high prospectivity for both Karoo and calcrete-hosted uranium mineralisation.Impact Minerals says it hopes to start developing a uranium project in the country as early as this year.

In a statement, the company says that  the potential to develop the project has always been there, explaining that the area was not developed before because a layer of sand, no thicker than 10 m, covers the top of the area, preventing the radiometric anomalies from being discovered.' Botswana offers an attractive investment option to the company, with the most attractive aspect being the country's political stability.

' Because mining contributes between 40 percent and 50 percent to Botswana's gross domestic product, the Botswana government is highly supportive of mining initiatives,' the company states.