Lake Athabasca north shore busy with mining
By Don Jaque 25.JUN.08
Slave River Journal
Red Rock Energy is one of at least seven exploration companies actively drilling for uranium on the north shore of Lake Athabasca in the Uranium City vicinity.
Founded by former Fort Smith resident Sandy Loutitt who now lives in Calgary, Red Rock has a geological team of nine plus eight drillers and plans to continuously drill until Christmas. They have leases to the southwest of nearby Uranium City and northeast of the airport. Both leases include old former uranium mines. The Red Rock website (redrockenergy.ca) says the Uranium City area “…holds the promise of significant new discoveries. When combined with the area’s abundant existing road, power and other civil infrastructure, Uranium City has the potential to be a thriving uranium district again.”
All this activity has been encouraged by the recent steady climb in the price of uranium, a ten fold increase over the last five years. It was given a shot of adrenalin recently when Sen. John McCain, the American Republican presidential nominee called for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors in the United States by 2030.
Cameco (cameco.com) which grew out of the old Elderado Nuclear crown corporation is the largest company in the area and in fact claims to be “the world’s largest uranium producer.” Its head office is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is working in the vicinity of Maurice Bay, an area heavily explored in the past. Maurice Bay is west of Uranium City and just west of the small settlement of Camsel Portage. It is about 110 km east of Fort Chipewyan and a similar distance southeast of Fort Smith. Cameco, which has a major mining operation in Kazakhstan claims its “… uranium products are used to generate electricity in nuclear energy plants around the world.” On June 11 it announced it is working out a deal to purchase uranium derived from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons.
Forum Energy Corp (forumuranium.com) is a Vancouver-based energy company “with a focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of Canadian uranium projects in the Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan and the Thelon Basin, Nunavut.” It too is exploring in the Maurice Bay area. Forum is also active in the Thelon basin just west of Baker Lake.
Other companies on the north shore of Lake Athabasca include CanAlaska (canalaska.com), a Vancouver based company whose website brags it is “… aggressively exploring over one million hectares (4000 sq. miles) of the Athabasca Basin for high grade uranium deposits.”
Golden Valley Mines Ltd. (goldenvalleymines.com) has set up a camp on Bear Tooth Island in the middle of Lake Athabasca about 18 km south east of Maurice Bay. The Quebec company is planning a drilling program this coming winter and has set up a camp on the island.
Uranium City Resources (uraniumcityresources.com) has claimed the biggest area around Uranium City. Its impressive leases include Beaverlodge Lake, the site of the old Elderado mine. The company’s leases dominate the landscape around Uranium City to the east and south. They contain numerous old mine sites. The president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Saskatchewan company is Robert Kasner.
Kasner is also the president and CEO of GLR Resources (glrresources.com) that plans to mine gold in the area. GLR received permission to proceed with the Goldfields project May 30 from the Saskatchewan minister of environment.
“The Goldfields project consists of two open-pitable gold deposits at the Box and Athona sites [both old gold mines] containing in excess of one million ounces of gold, according to the GLR website. GLR is focused on “bringing the Goldfields project into production in 2009,” says Kasner, in a press release.
Gold was actually the first mineral discovery in the area. Placer gold was panned before 1911, about when Charles Camsel came through heading north on the Tazin River. Joseph B Tyrell had explored the area about ten years earlier. There was a gold claim staking rush there in 1921. Around the same time Einstein produced his theory of relativity, the Halifax Harbour explosion took place, the neutron was discovered and of course in 1929 the stock market crashed and the great depression ensued. In 1930 pitchblende was discovered on the southeast shore of Great Bear Lake by Eldorado Gold Mines. The Port Radium Mine would develop there and uranium was extracted and shipped down the Mackenzie and Slave Rivers (and hauled around the Slave Rapids portage) to be used for the American atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, immediately terminating World War II. In 1934 there was another round of claim staking near what is now Uranium City, largely by residents of Fort Chipewyan. Out of that the Great Bear Mine developed what would later become Athona Mine at Goldfields on Beaverlodge Lake. In 1935, a hydro electric plant was established on the Wellington River, 22 miles from Goldfields, which was needed to power the mine and mill.
In 1948 prospecting for uranium ore on provincially held land, previously restricted to Eldorado, was opened to the public and a claim staking rush for uranium ensued. Eldorado then sank the Ace shaft down to the uranium deposits on the St. Louis Fault. Eldorado was appointed Canada’s agent for the purchase of all uranium produced in Canada and its sale to the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Of course during this time World War II had engulfed the globe. In 1952 the construction of Uranium City by the Saskatchewan government commenced with the input of Eldorado. The Municipality of Uranium City was established.
The Crown Corporation Elderado Nuclear then mined uranium at the Beaverlodge Lake field near Uranium City for 30 years until the bottom dropped out of uranium prices. In addition to the big Elderado site, there were about 15 other smaller mines in the heyday. Elderado produced approximately 77 million pounds of uranium until production ceased in 1982. The town then rapidly diminished from its peak near 5,000 to less than a hundred residents. It has now revived to roughly 125 residents (including exploration teams).
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