Peninsula Energy moves closer to uranium production restart at Lance project
Peninsula Energy (ASX: PEN) has confirmed capacity expansion and construction project at its central processing plant at the flagship Lance uranium project in Wyoming is advancing towards a production restart before year-end.
The company made solid progress on site construction and Phase II plant expansion work during August as it moves towards becoming Australia’s newest producer of high-quality yellowcake.
Site activity is reported to be at a high level, with approximately 70 contractors operating on a 24-hour roster to allow various disciplines to work continuously with minimal conflicts.
Production areas
Peninsula is actively developing new well-field production areas known as Mine Unit 3 (MU-3) and Mine Unit 4 (MU-4).
The company currently has 11 drill rigs under contract, some of which are being used to install new in-situ recovery (ISR) pattern wells (injection and production) at MU-3.
76% of the planned wells have so far been drilled and cased, with work due for completion late in the fourth quarter of this year.
Construction of the well-field infrastructure for the entire MU-3 area is 80% complete, while five rigs have commenced resource delineation and monitoring well installation activities at MU-4.
Restart on track
Substantial portions of the plant floor slabs at Lance have been poured to date and final pours are due for completion this month.
Buildings are starting to be erected, with the completion of exteriors planned for October.
“We are staying focused on our goal of restarting uranium operations this year,” Peninsula chief executive officer Wayne Heili said.
“The fundamentals and importance of uranium continue to strengthen, as countries across the globe embrace nuclear energy to achieve decarbonisation targets.”
“We will be bringing Lance online at a time when the need for new uranium resources could not be stronger.”
Near-term project
Underpinned by a resource estimate of 58 million pounds of uranium oxide, Lance (originally built in 2015 as an alkaline ISR satellite plant) is one of the largest near-term uranium ISR projects in the US.
Peninsula is currently modifying the Ross uranium recovery processing plant and auxiliary facilities at Lance for an expanded capacity using a low-acidity process to output a finished dry yellowcake product.
The Phase II expansion will house an additional ion-exchange circuit capacity along with new resin elution, precipitation, filtration and product drying circuits.
On completion, the project will feature a 5,000-gallon-per-minute uranium recovery ion-exchange process plant with the capacity to independently produce up to 2Mlbpa of dry yellowcake.