Current Activity
With the current increase in price and demand for nuclear reactor fuel (http://www.uxc.com), the Arizona Strip is again the site of very active uranium mineral exploration. The former Energy Fuels Nuclear White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, is now owned and operated by the vertically-integrated Denison Mines Corporation (http://www.denisonmines.com). Besides operating the mill built by Energy Fuels Nuclear, Inc., Denison is in the process of re-opening four of the breccia pipe underground mines previously discovered and developed by Energy Fuels. More than 500 breccia pipe targets in the Arizona Strip area are actively being explored by at least 11 mineral exploration companies (May 25, 2007, data):
- DIR Exploration, Inc.: a privately held US company in the Kaibab Joint Venture with the public company, Takara Resources, Inc.; total breccia pipe target number is 204.
- Energy Fuels, Inc.: 25 targets.
- Energy Metals Corporation: 11 targets.
- Liberty Star Uranium and Metals Corporation: 343 targets.
- Mesa Uranium Corporation: 13 targets.
- Quaterra Resources, Inc.: 15 targets.
- SXR Uranium One, Inc.: company has just independently entered the area to begin conducting exploration work, but see the joint venture described below with Uranium Power Corporation.
- Tournigan Gold Corporation: 83 targets.
- Uranium Power Corporation: 14 wholly owned targets, and an additional 27 in joint venture with SXR Uranium One, Inc., for a total of 41.
- VANE Mineral Resources, Inc.: 38 targets.
- Northern Arizona Uranium Project : 4 targets
Largely because of their relatively high ore grade and compactness, the United States Geological Survey anticipates that Arizona collapse breccia pipes will be “…the major source of future uranium production within the United States."
Read more about this topic: Arizona Breccia Pipe Uranium Mineralization
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)