Approved PACE project DPY2-11 was an attempt to find calcrete or roll-front type sedimentary uranium mineralisation in Quaternary fluvial channels that drain the northern and eastern margins of the uranium-enriched Mount Painter and Mount Babbage...
Approved PACE project DPY2-11 was an attempt to find calcrete or roll-front type sedimentary uranium mineralisation in Quaternary fluvial channels that drain the northern and eastern margins of the uranium-enriched Mount Painter and Mount Babbage basement inliers, located within the northern Curnamona Province. A total of 137 aircore holes for 4246 m were drilled on 23 traverses across 11 separate channels. The subsidised PACE drilling aimed to establish the thickness of the Quaternary sequence, and to test for the presence of valley fill style calcrete, or of reduzate, low stream gradient channel sands and lacustrine marginal facies, that might host economic secondary uranium mineralisation. This drilling has shown the target Quaternary sequences are predominantly thin, oxidised sand and gravel veneers varying from 2 to 15 m thick, deposited unconformably above a weathered clay sequence interpreted as oxidised Middle-Late Tertiary Namba Formation. No significant valley fill calcrete or geochemically reduced zones were defined in the channel sequences, and no anomalous radioactivity readings were detected from scintillometer scans of the recovered drill cuttings. Assaying of selected drill cuttings samples has confirmed that no uranium mineralisation was intersected. Although the holes in this drill programme were widely separated, it is concluded that no further exploration for uranium in the Quaternary channels draining the northern Mount Painter and Mount Babbage Inliers is warranted.
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