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High Grade Uranium Found in Otish Basin - On Track with Discovery
In fall, 2008, Kodiak made a new and very exciting uranium discovery known as the Big Bang. The new discovery is located on Kodiak's UR East claims in Quebec's Otish Basin, which is often compared to the Athabasca Basin according to Quebec's Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife. By hand trenching a weakly radioactive surface anomaly, Kodiak's field crew exposed a uranium-rich shear zone more than 3 m wide that gave readings so high (66,000 cps) they went off the scale of the RS-125 spectrometer. On its uranium assay setting, the spectrometer returned an over-the-limit value of >10,000 ppm U (more than 1.18% U3O8). The field crew confirmed that the entire stripped bedrock surface is radioactive, and yellow uranophane, an oxidation product of uranium, is widespread. They managed to trace the zone in hand pits for a total strike length of 20 metres, and it remains open in all directions. In the same area, the crew found another radioactive outcrop 1100 metres on trend to the northeast, as well as a parallel radioactive zone 70 metres to the southeast, confirming the extent of the radioactive structures and suggesting the potential for further discoveries is excellent.
Geophysical maps indicate that the new discoveries coincide with magnetic features that are interpreted as gabbro dykes similar to those associated with uranium mineralization at Strateco's Matoush deposit (16.8 million pounds of U3O8 based on drilling to date). The dykes at Matoush are sheared and altered, and are localized along fault zones that cut through the basement rocks and overlying basinal sediments. Kodiak has already identified more than 15 priority targets in the Big Bang discovery area, and more than 90 km of prospective magnetic structures remain to be explored on the property.
Altogether, Kodiak has an extensive land package covering 428.7 square kilometres of the Otish Basin that includes a wide range of geological settings, target types, showings, and geochemical anomalies. Much of the ground formerly belonged to Uranerz, a large European uranium company that explored here in the 1970s, but allowed its claims to lapse after uranium prices collapsed in the early 1980s.
Kodiak's 2008 exploration on the 308 West and UR properties also generated very encouraging results. Kodiak's 308 West property comprises 4,626 acres on the north rim of the Paskwati Basin, an outlier southwest of the Otish Basin that contains terrestrial sedimentary rocks of the same age, while the UR property covers 15,404 acres on the northeast rim of the Otish Basin.
On the 308 West claim block, Kodiak has discovered a new showing called the Big Yellow, a 30 x 30 metre outcrop of flat-lying rusty conglomeratic sandstone that gave scintillometer readings up to 10,000 cps. Like the Big Bang showing, the Big Yellow outcrop is located near the intersection of two magnetic structures that strike NE and NNW. A NE-trending gabbro dyke was found near the discovery outcrop, confirming the magnetic interpretation, and indicating a geologic setting very similar to Matoush. Over 90 km of prospective structures remain to be explored on this property as well. The historic Yvon showing also occurs on the 308 West claim block. Discovered by Uranerz, it consists of a narrow pitchblende vein in granite-gneiss bedrock that was traced for 15 metres but never drill tested. Radioactive boulders have also been found on the property, and historic lake sediment anomalies ranging from 405 ppm to 1,920 ppm U were recorded near the eastern edge of the claims.
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