Wednesday, 26 September, 2007

by Alison Bevege
NT News

DRILLING has started at the Napperby uranium project, 150km northwest of Alice Springs.

Junior explorer Toro Energy is to probe 700 drill holes creating 6000m worth of samples.

The deposit contains 1.5 million pounds of uranium, but Toro managing director Greg Hall said that was not enough to make the project viable.

"We have to get a larger resource to get a viable project," Mr Hall said.

Mr Hall said the known 1.5 million pounds was only in one tenth of the mineralisation channel. When explored by Uranerz in the 1970s, it had a resource of 13 million pounds.

But that was a historical figure and must be re-proved to comply with current industry standards.

Mr Hall said he believed it would take about 18 months to prove-up the project, but said the company plans to start a scoping study.

The uranium lies less than 7m from the surface, which means any mine would likely be a shallow strip operation, Mr Hall said.

Toro is planning to use sonic drilling technology to sample the cores.

"We believe it's the first time sonic core holes have been used in Australia to drill for uranium," he said.

The sonic drill will vibrate its way into the earth at high frequency, rather than spinning as diamond drills do. Toro Energy is in the process of merging with fellow uranium junior Nova Energy.

The company has also applied for exploration licenses over 1830sq km in the Tanami desert.