Toro Energy Announces Results from Wiluna Uranium Project Studies

Toro Energy Limited (ASX:TOE) announced today the results of a series of technical R&D studies from their 100% owned Wiluna Uranium Project in Western Australia. The goals of the research studies were to explore opportunities to enhance and optimize the process design, project configuration and operating and capital cost structure for the Wiluna Uranium Project.
As quoted in the press release:

Resource Drilling
Toro completed a 130 sonic drill hole campaign at the Centipede, Millipede, Lake Maitland and Nowthanna deposits, which aimed to help determine why downhole gamma probe measurements for uranium appear to under-estimate the uranium present compared to uranium values from geochemical analysis, particularly at high grades. The analysis will provide new data to interpret gamma probe assays on which the resource is based. Early results have significantly improved Toro’s understanding of the relationship of uranium grade to mineralogy and the impact this may have on the application of gamma measurement historically to determining the Wiluna resource. Toro anticipates being able to release a new mineral resource estimate based on these results in the fourth quarter 2015.
Metallurgical Studies
Program During 2015, Toro has undertaken a multi-staged metallurgical program to assess the applicability of the U-pgradeTM process to ore samples collected from Wiluna. Marenica Energy Limited has developed U-pgradeTM – a beneficiation process that has been reported to achieve ~98% rejection of mass and a 50 times concentration of uranium in leach feed on calcrete hosted uranium ore samples from Namibia. Initial components of the full program have achieved promising results, including the following:

• removal of fine particles (“slimes”) from the feed samples (“desliming”). This work has demonstrated that desliming the ore results in the rejection of approximately 15% of ore mass with a very low uranium loss to a slime product. This is now being assessed to optimize the water balance for the project
• significantly improved physical characteristics of the deslimed product which have the potential to decrease the size of critical equipment and realise a capital and operating cost saving to the project; and
• identification of a previously unknown mineral association that has the potential to be exploited by selective recovery away from the rest of the barren gangue minerals. This would result in an increased grade, and reduced tonnage to the hydrometallurgical processing facility that has already been tested and designed. Testwork continues in this area to define the full potential of this separation.

While these interim results are encouraging, further work is now underway including a variability program to validate the results achieved to-date across the entire resource base.

Click here for the Toro Energy Limited (ASX:TOE) press release.
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