Australian Uranium Explorer Northern Uranium Discovers Prized Heavy Rare Earth Elements

Rare Earths

Rare earths are a particular class of elements in the Periodic Table that were once difficult to extract and purify. They are used in many high-technology applications including magnets, rechargeable batteries, electronic displays, lasers, superconductors, catalytic converters, smart bombs, and wind turbines. China supplies about 95% of world production. Given the strategic importance of rare earths, China has been stockpiling them and restricting exports. A Chinese government report has recommended an outright ban on exporting the scarcest of these elements.


NORTHERN URANIUM - NTU

Northern Uranium (ASX: NTU) has followed up December discoveries of significant rare earth elements targets at its 100%-owned Gardiner-Tanami project, with today's news of high concentration of heavy rare earth elements (HREE) in the mineralization.

Heavy REE's have a significantly higher market value on a per pound basis than the more common light REE's.

NTU identified unusually high concentrations of HREE in hydrothermal quartz-xenotime mineralisation in the Browns Range Dome area at Gardiner-Tanami.

NTU has targeted rare earths exploration as a significant focus in 2010 at at the Gardiner-Tanami project, bordering the Northern Territory and Western Australia, in tandem with the company's core uranium project.

The results of an age-dating study pointed to the possibility of large scale HREE ore-deposit potential in the area.

The company's HREE discovery represents an interesting value-adding component for NTU investors and shareholders.

Executive chairman Kevin Schultz said that a further study of the HREE bearing mineralisation at the company's tenements showed that at current REE prices it has extremely high in-ground value.

In fact, analysis to date indicated it has an estimated in-ground value of US$1,270 per tonne.

Xenotime (a yttrium and rare earths bearing phosphate mineral) was first identified in the western Browns Range Dome area in the 1980s by Japanese nuclear energy organization PNC Exploration while exploring for uranium.

PNC named the area of quartz-xenotime mineralisation “Area 5 Prospect” and one of the larger quartz-xenotime veins gave extremely high grade results up to 16% yttrium, 0.2% uranium, 0.5% light Rare Earth Elements (LREE) and 12% HREE.

Then in 2009, previously unknown quartz-xenotime mineralisation was encountered by NTU - 4km to the northnortheast of Area 5 Prospect during Northern Uranium’s uranium exploration program.

These newly discovered hydrothermal xenotime-quartz stockworks, referred to as “NNE Prospect”, are similar to the Area 5 occurrences. Xenotime concentration was recorded as being up to 3-4 wt-%.

Interestingly, the rare earths and Yttrium distribution from assay results of the quartzxenotime mineralisation at NNE Prospect at typical current market prices for rare earth metals, demonstrates NTU's HREE's at Browns Range compares favourably with other major global REE deposits.

The Browns Range Dome area could conceivably become an important new province for highgrade Yttrium-HREE mineralisation.

NTU will proceed with the HREE exploration program, in conjunction with the 2010 uranium exploration programm including review and re-processing of airborne mapping data and airborne radiometrics.

An extensive rare earths target zone has been identified by NTU at the project.

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