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NexGen's Rook 1 camp at Arrow

It's an active start to the week for Athabasca Basin uranium plays, and NexGen Energy (NXE-V) is leading the way with another batch of stellar assays from its Arrow project. Also in the southwestern Basin, Fission Uranium (FCU-T) announced a final agreement and offtake deal with China's CGN Mining on its Triple R deposit.

The hits keep coming for NexGen, which this morning released another six angled drill holes focusing on the A3 shear zone at the company's Rook 1 property in the southwestern Basin.

Highlights included separate intervals of 10.5 metres at 8.52% uranium and 37 metres at 6.3% in hole AR-15-61c2 (the latter hit also included 15m at 10.10%). Hole AR-15-59c3 also intercepted high-grade mineralization in the southwest portion of the A3 zone, 4.5m at 13.17%.

Results from other holes included 14m at 3.57% uranium and 10m at 2.49%.

"Intersecting the best hole to date in the A3 shear in one of the last holes of the summer 2015 program leads NexGen into a very exciting winter 2016 drill season," said NexGen CEO Leigh Curyer. "The team looks forward to continuing to develop these higher grade zones now identified within the A3 shear along with a number of other 2016 drill program objectives within all shears and outside the currently defined extents of the Arrow zone."

Market reaction was favourable in early trading, pushing NXE up 1 cent to 80 cents.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Rob Chang described the results as "very positive."

"NXE remains our top pick. Our most recent resource forecast was 148.6M lbs. U3O8 at an average grade of 0.64%. We are currently reviewing our resource estimate in light of recent results with a positive bias," Chang said in a morning note.

The final hole to be released from the summer drill program is AR-15-62, and it could be a barnburner: the drill intercepted 30.35 metres of off-scale radioactivity.

All assays released to date - as well as AR-15-62 - will be included in NexGen's maiden resource estimate, which is expected during the month of March.

The company's 30,000-metre winter drill program at Rook 1 is already underway with six rigs, and holes 61c2 and 59c3 - which both remain open - are two of the top targets.

NexGen has $34 million in the treasury to start 2016.

NR: NexGen Returns Strongest Assay to Date in the A3 Shear with 10.5 Metres at 8.52% U308 and 37 Metres at 6.3% U308

Price: 0.79
Shares outstanding: 287 million
Market cap: $227 million
Cash on hand: $34 million

Fission Uranium has finalized a subscription agreement that will see Chinese uranium trader CGN Mining pay about $82.2 million (at 85 cents a share) to take a 19.9% stake in Fission.

The parties also agreed to an offtake agreement for 20% of annual uranium production from Fission's Triple R deposit, with an option for a further 15% "at industry standard terms."

NR: Fission announces execution of subscription agreement and offtake agreement with CGN Mining

Price: 0.76
Shares outstanding: 387 million
Market cap: $294 million
Cash on hand: $12 million (as of Sept. 30)

In the eastern Basin, Forum Uranium (FDC-V) announced this morning that Rio Tinto is mobilizing two diamond drill rigs to Forum's 40% owned Henday property.

Henday is located northeast of the Denison/AREVA Midwest Lake deposit and Rio's Roughrider deposit, and it borders on AREVA/Denison's McClean Lake uranium mine and mill.

Rio Tinto identified several targets from a 1,204 line km aerial magnetic and electromagnetic survey completed in the summer.

NR: Rio Tinto Canada Uranium Corporation Plans Winter Drill Program on Forum's 40% Owned Henday Property

Price: 0.075
Shares outstanding: 35.7 million
Market cap: $2.7 million
Cash on hand: $750,000