The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
As the SE Alaska rare earths project closes in on permitting, Ucore begins to explore a placer REE-tin property in the Interior
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has field programs underway at both the Bokan-Dotson Ridge rare earth elements project in Southeast Alaska and its Ray Mountain REE-tin project in the Interior region of the state.
Work at Bokan Mountain is focused on collecting the last bits of information needed to complete a plan of operation that can be submitted for permitting and finalize a feasibility study scheduled for delivery in 2015.
As a potential domestic source of a suite of heavy rare earth elements that many consider minerals critical to the United States, including dysprosium, terbium, yttrium and europium, Ucore's Bokan Mountain project in Southeast Alaska has garnered attention from officials on both the state and national level.
The most recent expression of this government support is Senate Bill 99, legislation that authorizes the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to issue up to US$145 million in bonds to fund infrastructure and construction at Ucore Rare Metals' Bokan Mountain.
"Bokan represents an unsurpassed opportunity for Alaska to furnish materials of critical importance to American national defense, energy consumption and competitiveness in high-tech applications at a world level, and Alaska lawmakers have recognized this," Ucore President and CEO Jim McKenzie said as the bill was wending its way through the Legislature.
During a June ceremony held in Ketchikan, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell endorsed the legislation by signing it into law.
"The official signing of SB99 is an important milestone for our company and for the people of Alaska," said McKenzie. "Bokan will advance Alaska's economic agenda, and ensure a secure domestic supply line of rare earth metals for the American market."
Before AIDEA is willing to offer up any funding under the provisions provided by the legislation, Ucore must convince the quasi-state-owned agency that developing a mine at Bokan and building an associated REE processing facility will pay dividends on the capital investment.
In mid-July, Ucore kicked off a 5,000-meter drill program that aims to gather the final bits of geological and geotechnical data needed for an upcoming feasibility study, just the level of analysis needed for the AIDEA board of directors to undertake its due diligence on the viability of investing in the REE project.
"It's great to see this program get underway as one of the final steps required to trigger our forthcoming feasibility study," said Ucore COO Ken Collison.
Feasibility studies
In its trek to get Bokan in operation as early as possible, Ucore has hired SRK Consulting to compile baseline data and qualitative results from ongoing engineering studies to produce a formal plan of operations for the rare earths project. This plan will be submitted to the U.S. Forest Service to facilitate delivery of an Environmental Impact Statement and initiate the review process set out in the National Environmental Policy Act.
This work includes:
The continued collection of baseline water samples, which began in 2012;
Construction of a meteorological station to collect weather data required for the permitting process;
Kinetic testing of representative samples of drill core required to support state and federal permitting initiatives; and
Barrel tests containing samples of sorted rock to assess water quality runoff for the planned rock management facility, which will contain rock rejected from the x-ray sorting equipment planned for the Bokan operation.
This summer's work also will inform the upcoming feasibility study, which builds upon a 2012 preliminary economic assessment that anticipates an underground mine feeding 1,500 tons of ore to a 750-metric-tons-per-day mill and a state-of-the-art processing facility at Bokan Mountain.
This operation is anticipated to produce 2,250 metric tons of rare earth oxides per year during the first five years of full production; including an annual output of 95 metric tons of dysprosium oxide, 14 metric tons of terbium oxide, and 515 metric tons of yttrium oxide.
The ability to run a mill half the size of the ore being mined is due to an x-ray sorter that will reject half the feed as REE-barren waste prior to milling. By halving the material, the sorter is essentially doubling the mill head grade. Another 50 percent of the material is slated to be removed via magnetic separation between the mill and leaching circuit.
"So we are going to have 1,500 tpd coming out of the mine, but we are going to have a 750-tpd grinding circuit and then the leaching circuit, which is extensive, is only 375 tons per day," summarized Collison.
In addition to the economic advantages associated with purchasing and operating a smaller mill, this setup provides environmental rewards.
While the PEA envisions a small, temporary facility to store tailings during the early stages of development, at a certain point the mine will consume all of the tailings produced to fill underground voids.
"A zero tailings footprint is a unique environmental objective, and we are aware of no other mine, rare earth or otherwise, that has accomplished such a design feature," said McKenzie.
In the latter half of 2013, Ucore continued testing this cutting-edge technique. A 22-ton sample tested by a company in Germany rejected 52 percent of the feed while retaining 96.3 percent of the rare earths in the material that would report to the mill.
This resulted in an output grade from the sorter of 1.56 TREO, compared with 0.77 percent TREO in the original sample. In the fall of 2013, Ucore sent a 33-ton sample of Dotson Ridge material to Germany for further x-ray sorter testing.
The output from this sample will provide feed for a pilot plant for Bokan, the final stage of bulk-scale testing of the production circuit prior to the release of a bankable feasibility study. Rather than an onsite, scaled-down version of the facility, the pilot plant will involve up-scale bench testing of the various components planned for the cutting-edge operation.
The XRT sorting is one portion of the pilot plant; the testing of a state-of-the-art technique that utilizes nanotechnology to separate the 16 different rare earth elements found in the Dotson Ridge deposit at Bokan is another.
Metallurgical testing currently underway at Hazen Research of Denver aims to optimize the process flow-sheet already set out in Ucore's preliminary economic assessment.
The finalized flow-sheet will form the basis of the Bokan pilot plant scheduled for later this year.
Ucore is working with Montana-based IntelliMet LLC to pioneer an REE-processing technique known as solid-phase extraction, a nanotechnology process that is expected to result in a smaller and more efficient facility for transforming Bokan Mountain concentrates into rare earth oxides.
The results of the pilot-plant testing, together with a 5,000-meter drill program, will be incorporated into the Bokan feasibility study, scheduled for delivery in 2015.
"Very few heavy rare earth projects in the world are undertaking such an advanced level of development, permitting and field operations in 2014," touted McKenzie. "Ucore is increasingly a standalone story as the prospective go-to for super-metals critically required in U.S. military, green-tech and high tech arenas."
Upgrading, expanding resource
The 2012 PEA was based on an inferred resource of 5.3 million metric tons averaging 0.65 percent total rare earth oxides, which has since been updated.
This updated resource estimate, published by Ucore last October, outlines an indicated resource of 2.9 million metric tons averaging 0.614 percent (39.7 million metric tons) total rare earth oxides and an inferred resource of 2 million metric tons averaging 0.605 percent (26.6 million pounds) TREOs.
Roughly 40 percent of the TREOs are the higher valued heavy rare earths, many of which are considered critical to the green energy, defense and high-technology sectors.
A C$7.8-million private placement completed in April, along with C$2.8 million of working capital Ucore had on the books at the end of March, is anticipated to provide ample funds to meet Ucore's needs during the next 12 months, including the C$2.5-million drill program currently underway at the Southeast Alaska REE project.
The smaller of two rigs drilling at Bokan Mountain is focused on upgrading inferred resources to the indicated category by infill drilling of the rare earths deposit.
The larger rig is drilling multiple deep holes with the goal of expanding the resource to depth, as well as completing a number of geotechnical holes and groundwater monitoring wells to obtain supplementary data for use in the engineering and permitting of the project.
This program is expected to provide engineers with the data needed to complete a plan of operations for mining the heavy rare earth element-enriched deposit at Bokan Mountain.
"I am very pleased to see our Bokan project moving forward according to plan," said Ucore President and CEO Jim McKenzie. "We look forward to working in the field once again with Aurora Geosciences and our other consultants to advance this strategically important project. The list of pre-construction deliverables continues to shorten, and Bokan aims to be the first primarily heavy enriched rare earth mine to achieve production on U.S. soil."
Ray Mountains
As Ucore presses ahead at Bokan, the company has dispatched crews for a summer field program on its REE-tin property located roughly 110 miles (175 kilometers) northwest of Fairbanks.
The company said this program will include re-sampling and assay testing of key locations recently reported by the Alaska Geological Survey, and other earlier U.S. Bureau of Mines work in the area, and examine the geological setting of the Kilolitna River Basin.
Ucore said its Ray Mountains claim block is aligned with major alluvial features of the Ray Mountains region.
Rare earths and associated metals such as tin have been found to occur in the alluvial outwash of the Ruby granitic batholith located in the area. The target metals are contained in heavy minerals such as monazite, xenotime, cassiterite, wolframite and zircon, which are widespread throughout the region.
When Ucore staked the Ray Mountain claims in 2011, it noted that the prospective heavy mineral placers found there can be effectively concentrated via conventional gravity separation and processing methods using only water as the separation medium. The company also pointed out that the technology to process a monazite-xenotime placer concentrate for contained REEs has long been known elsewhere in the world and poses no new metallurgical challenges.
"The Ray Mountains region offers excellent access to established transportation routes, making these claims a potential source of heavy REEs for the processing facility currently being planned at the Bokan-Dotson Ridge deposit to the south," said McKenzie. "With an extensive drilling program commencing at our Bokan property, and the sampling work at Ray Mountains, it's a busy and exciting time for Ucore."
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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