Mega Uranium Ltd. (TSX:MGA) has announced that it has completed a 1831 meter, eight hole diamond core drilling program at its wholly owned Kintyre Rocks project in Western Australia.
Drilling was on a tenement adjoining the lease containing the Cameco-Mitsubishi joint venture's 79 million pounds U3O8 Kintyre resource, which is currently in prefeasibility.
The diamond drilling follows up on Mega's two previous reconnaissance drilling programs on the tenement which contributed to the identification of three buried uranium targets, all within a six kilometer radius of the Kintyre deposit. The drilling program has tested two of these targets, Area 1 and Gleneagles. Drilling of the third target, Southern Cross, was deferred to 2011 after problems were encountered in accessing the site.
Within Area 1 the prospective Cassandra Member stratigraphy has been intersected in three drill holes, covering a 700 meter cross section, with the Cassandra Member open to the south. The Cassandra Member is considered unique to the local Kintyre deposit area and fundamental to the discovery of further high grade uranium resources, as all the known Kintyre deposits are hosted within this Member. Mega's Area 1 intercepts are less than 3km south of Cameco-Mitsubishi's uranium deposit beneath a regionally extensive plain of thick sediment cover. Drill holes intersected up to 98 meters of the Cassandra stratigraphy beneath 32 to 77 meters of Permian glacial tillite sediments. These intercepts are highly encouraging as the Cassandra Member rarely outcrops at surface.
The units of the Cassandra Member include massive to interbedded carbonate and psammitic metasediments, partly magnetic banded iron formation (BIF), graphite, chlorite and sericite altered biotite schists and gneisses. In the Kintyre resource, high grade uranium mineralization occurs at the intersection of shear zones, metamorphic (S3) foliation and the brecciated and sheared contacts between brittle chert and calc silicate altered carbonate and psammite rich metasediments and the more ductile schists. Major dolomite, calcite and graphite rich units, which are considered unique to the Cassandra Member, define prospective areas and provide the means to identify blind uranium targets through a combination of magnetics, electromagnetics and gravity.
Mega's next phase of drilling in Area 1 will be based on the results of detailed structural and lithological logging of core. This information will be combined with geochemical vectors from all holes and a detailed interpretation of both ground electromagnetic and airborne magnetic surveys to optimize the selection of drill targets.
In the Gleneagles prospect, five diamond drill holes tested the two lobes of the gravity high and the resistive western margin of the combined gravity and magnetic anomalies. Intersections of ultramafics, previously unknown as significant lithologies in the Rudall Metamorphics, and denser than the majority of the Rudall Metamorphic suite, are the most likely cause of the gravity high. The resistive western margin of the gravity high proved to be silicified granite gneisses related to several northwest faults that intersect and divide the gravity anomalies. Magnetite rich layers within the granite gneiss are the source of the linear magnetics rather than the BIF unit that occurs within the Cassandra. As the Cassandra Member occurs stratigraphically above the granitic gneisses within the Rudall Metamorphic Group it is unlikely that the target stratigraphy has been preserved in this area, unless the stratigraphy is overturned. Further study of core will be undertaken, but at this stage no further drilling is envisaged.
Mega has identified two other priority drill targets within its Kintyre Rocks Project area - Southern Cross (planned for drilling in the recently completed program but delayed because of difficult access) and Wyoming Valley (a strong electromagnetic target under thick cover). Both targets occur within 6km of the Kintyre resource and are scheduled for drilling in early to mid 2011 along with further drilling in Area 1.
Stewart Taylor, Mega's President and Qualified Person under NI43-101, is responsible for this release and has verified the contents disclosed.