The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - February 12, 2024
Eight holes drilled during 2023 season and 35 historical holes have been outlined 8.1 billion lb of nickel in an expanded resource for the Eureka Zone at Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project.
Incorporating the results from its inaugural drill program at Nikolai, Alaska Energy Metals Corp. has already outlined 8.1 billion pounds of nickel in the project's Eureka Zone, which is more than five times the quantity of this battery metal than was contained within the resource calculated last November.
"With this updated mineral resource estimate, the Eureka deposit of the Nikolai nickel project represents a globally significant accumulation of nickel and has now become one of the larger known nickel deposits in the United States," said Alaska Energy Metals President and CEO Greg Beischer.
Not only is this resource reaching world-class status, but a significant portion of the deposit has been upgraded to the higher confidence indicated resource category.
According to the updated calculation, Eureka Zone now hosts 813 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.22% (3.88 billion lb) nickel, 0.07% (1.28 billion lb) copper, 0.02% (303 million lb) cobalt, and 0.15 grams per metric ton (4.03 million oz) palladium-platinum-gold.
In addition, the deposit hosts 896 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.21% (4.23 billion lb) nickel, 0.05% (1.04 billion lb) copper, 0.02% (327 million lb) cobalt, and 0.12 g/t (1.34 million oz) palladium-platinum-gold.
"In less than a year, we have taken an exploration concept to a substantial deposit of nickel and other critical metals," said Beischer.
Beischer was involved in the discovery of nickel at Nikolai during the mid-1990s, and over the ensuing years, there has been roughly $C30 million (US$22 million) of exploration carried out at the project, including wide-spaced drilling at Eureka Zone. Alaska Energy Metals invested approximately C$2 million (US$1.5 million) in cash and company shares to acquire a well-curated database from that exploration.
This database alone provided enough data to calculate an inaugural resource for Eureka Zone. This first-ever calculation outlined 319.6 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.22% (1.55 billion lb) nickel, 0.05% (372 million lb) copper, 0.02% (115 million lb) cobalt, and 0.13 g/t (1.34 million oz) palladium-platinum-gold.
Click on image for full Eureka Zone resource map.
This resource is contained within two pits about 2,000 meters apart – Eureka East and Eureka West – toward the northwest end of the 10-mile-long (16 kilometers) Eureka Zone trend.
"The two areas in which we were able to calculate an inferred mineral resource, based only on historical drill holes, are approximately two kilometers apart," Beischer said last November. "Other sparse, historical holes drilled between the deposits indicate a reasonable likelihood that further grid-based drilling will ultimately connect the two deposits together."
The eight holes drilled last summer were enough to do just that. Combined with 35 historical holes, the 2023 drilling outlined a 4.5-kilometer- (2.8 miles) long deposit that encompasses both the previous Eureka East and West resources.
As an added benefit of connecting the deposits, the waste-to-ore strip ratio was lowered from 3.7-to-one to 1.5-to-one, which will have a significant positive impact on the economics when it comes time to start evaluating mining scenarios.
Another potential positive impact for future mining is a higher-grade core zone. This zone encompasses 211 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.34% nickel-equivalent, which accounts for the value of all the metals, and 154 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.33% nickel-equivalent. This is roughly 20% higher than the approximately 28% nickel-equivalent overall grade for the Eureka deposit.
The rapid build-up of resources at Nikolai comes at a time when the demand for the metals found there is expected to be strong due to their use in clean energy technologies. Nickel and cobalt are key ingredients in the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and storing renewable energy, platinum and palladium are used as catalysts for producing hydrogen, and copper is the metal that wires together an electric-centric low-carbon future.
The aurora borealis and big dipper adorn the night sky over a drill testing the large and nickel-enriched Eureka zone at Nikolai.
"Nikolai could potentially become an important source of nickel for the USA, catering to the needs of various manufacturing sectors including stainless steel, electric vehicles, defense components, long-term, grid-scale renewable energy storage batteries and a myriad of other uses," said Beischer.
To upgrade and expand this potential, Alaska Energy Metals is planning to carry out a 15,000-meter drill program this year that includes resource upgrade and expansion drilling at Eureka and exploratory drilling to test high-grade targets across the wider Nikolai projects.
"With an aggressive drilling program planned at Nikolai in 2024, we believe we will significantly expand the Nikolai project's metal inventory," the Alaska Energy Metals CEO said earlier this year.
The company is also initiating metallurgical work to assess the best means of recovering the nickel and other metals being outlined at Nikolai.
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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