Ruby Hill – Thelon Basin
Western Uranium Corporation through its wholly owned subsidiary Ruby Hill Exploration Inc., has 49 mineral claims covering 126,543 acres. These claims are located along the north and north-east perimeter of the Thelon sandstone basin.
The Thelon and Athabasca basins were formed at the same time in the Proterozoic in the same environment and are similar geologically in all major aspects. The Athabasca basin is host to the world’s largest economic and richest concentrations of uranium deposits. Although the Thelon basin has been far less intensively explored than the Athabasca basin, large regional programs of airborne radiometrics and magnetics, lake water and sediment sampling, and prospecting were carried out in the Thelon by a number of companies in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. These types of surveys identified the Kiggavik deposit (Areva) located on the northern end of the Thelon in Nunavut. Areva reports that Kiggavik contains approximately 57,000 tonnes of uranium at a grade of 0.24% (125 million pounds) U3O8, hosted in basement gneiss. Another prospect, Boomerang Lake, (Uravan/Cameco JV) was identified in the southern end of the Thelon where a drill hole intersected 0.5 metres grading 0.50% U3O8, 22.4 g/t Au, and 12.3 g/t Ag in strongly altered Thelon sandstone at the faulted unconformity contact. These prospects share a number of similarities with the complex unconformity-type deposits of the Athabasca basin such as Key Lake and Cigar Lake, supporting the hypothesis that the Thelon Basin has strong potential to host similar high grade deposits.
Western completed an airborne deep-penetrating electromagnetic and magnetic (MEGATEM) survey over the Company’s entire property during 2006. This survey identified a number of strong conductors along regional structural corridors which were further delineated by a ground-based audio-magneto telluric (AMT) survey in April 2007. Concurrent core drilling tested a discrete airborne anomaly on the eastern edge of the Company’s prospecting permits, discovering altered and weakly mineralized basement quartzites and graphitic shales. The first two drill holes intersected a southeasterly dipping zone containing sheared graphite in a package of locally silicified, Amer Group sandstones and siltstones. Graphite was also noted as having been having been remobilized into steeper-dipping fractures within the surrounding sandstones. The two holes drilled on the western edge of the conductive zone encountered 50-75 meter intervals of silicification containing localized zones of hematization and several 0.5-1.0 meter graphitic breccia zones in calcareous sandstones and siltstones. These alteration styles are also often associated with the uranium mineralization in the Athabasca Basin. In late summer, one additional core hole was drilled on this anomaly as well as an additional three core holes that were drilled to test suspected Thelon sandstone within a six kilometre long EM conductor coincident with a mapped regional structural zone. Although one of these holes intersected Thelon sandstone, none of them encountered favorable structures, alteration, or mineralization. The drilling did not adequately explain the airborne and ground geophysical anomalies and it is possible these three holes may have been too shallow.
Geological mapping and geochemical sampling of the drill areas and other suspected traces of the sandstone/basement unconformity in the fall of 2007 led to the staking of 49 Ruby claims in the late summer of 2008. Additional mapping and sampling was completed on the newly staked claims for assessment purposes. Work expenditures are adequate to keep the claims in good standing for several years while the Company determines whether additional work should be undertaken.
