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