The latest drill results at Deep Yellow’s Tumas 3 in Namibia proved that the project’s 22.5-year life of mine could be increased to 30 years.
The Tumas 3 uranium project’s mineral resource is 66.8Mlb at 300ppm.
The indicated mineral resource is 60.6Mlb grading 325ppm, and the inferred mineral resource is 6.2Mlb at 170ppm.
Deep Yellow has a 100% shareholding in Tumas 3 through its wholly owned subsidiary Reptile Uranium Namibia (Pty) Ltd.
Exploration since 2016 has been highly successful, highlighted by a more than fourfold increase in the project’s paleochannel/calcrete resource (mainly at the Tumas 3 and Tumas 1 East discoveries) at a meagre discovery cost of 9.4c/lb.
An initial Scoping Study on Tumas delivered positive results in January 2020, followed by a pre-feasibility study completed in February 2021, which had robust results in line with, and in some cases better than, the Scoping Study.
Deep Yellow also owns the Omahola project, the Nova JV with the Japanese agency JOGMEC, and the Yellow Dune JV.
Tumas 3 is the biggest uranium deposit along the Tumas palaeodrainage. Together with the Tumas 1, 1 East, Tumas 2 and Tubas deposits, the palaeodrainage contains about 139 million pounds of U3O8 inferred and indicated resources, of which 67.3 million pounds are currently held in a probable ore reserve.
Deep Yellow managing director John Boshoff said the Tumas palaeochannel already holds 30 million pounds of uranium oxide in the inferred resource category, which is available for future upgrading to an indicated resource status.
According to Boshoff, the results from the drill programme and the resource growth potential through future exploration across the Tumas project area provide great confidence to deliver on our long-term life of mine target at Tumas.
