(Image: Denison Mines Corp)

(Image: Denison Mines Corp)

With most of the focus in the uranium exploration business currently focused on the west side of the Athabasca basin, specifically in the Patterson Lake South area, Denison Mines (DML:TSX) and others have been developing their high-grade projects on the eastern part of the basin.

This morning, the Lundin Group company, Denison, announced an updated resource estimate for their high-grade Phoenix deposit which saw both grades and contained pounds increase.

Due to continued success at the drill bit, total indicated resources increased 34% from their 2012 estimate of 52.3 million pounds to over 70.2 million pounds.  The grade improved by almost 23% from an average grade of 15.6% U308 to 19.13% U308.

This improvement came largely on the back of successfully converting inferred resources to indicated.

The Phoenix deposit is part of the company's Wheeler River project which is owned 60% by Denison, 30% by Cameco and 10% by JCU.

Denison has planned an aggressive 14,000m summer drill campaign, which is already underway. Two drills are primarily assigned to extending high-grade basement hosted mineralization discovered in March, 2014, at the Gryphon zone.

They will also complete a 3D DC-resistivity survey on the northern strike extension of the Phoenix trend to aid drill hole targeting in this prospective area.

The Gryphon zone is a new high-grade mineralized zone recently discovered by the exploration team at Denison.  Last week, the company released holes which intersected 4m of 15.3% U308 and 4.5m of 21.2% U308 at Gryphon.

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Read: Denison Announces Phoenix Uranium Deposit Mineral Resource Estimate Now Over 70 Million Pounds