Is there an Athabasca style unconformity uranium deposit underneath the Copper Mountain project in Wyoming USA? At first I thought it was just a good sales pitch, too good to be true. But the evidence is starting to pile up the more I read.
The 1982 Bendix report noted that the archean granite rocks were hydrothermally altered, blasted by hot, mineral-rich fluids coming from below, not just water from the surface. Illite and Chlorite alteration is also found at Copper Mountain, indicating hydrothermal activity.
2010 drilling by Anaconda at Railroad hit uranium 1000 ft deep. And recent drilling by Myriad at Canning hit uranium 1500 ft deep. Railroad and Canning are located on opposite ends of a 3 mile long corridor that Myriad has strategically staked claims around.
Disequilibrium from recent Myriad drilling favors 20-60% upside assay vs gamma probe.
In shallow roll-front deposits, like Copper Mountain was initially thought to be, the radiation and chemical levels usually match. In deep hydrothermal systems, the uranium is often so concentrated that the radiation hasn't caught up to the actual metal content.
Athabasca deposits occur at the unconformity starting around 500 meter depth where the 1.9 billion year old Proterozoic basement rock meets the overlying sandstone, and the uranium is concentrated where deep hydrothermal fluids carried uranium up until it hit the sandstone. Copper Mountain has similar setup with the basement 2.5 billion year old archean granite and sandstone on top.
The 1982 study concluding 200+ million lbs at shallow 600ft maximum depth could be just the tip of the iceberg.