Laserfiche WebLink
EXHIBIT D - MINING PLAN <br />1. Background Information <br />Davis Mesa and the Last Chance Permit Area are areas with a long history of uranium mining. <br />The host rock is the Morrison Formation, Salt Wash member and is present at the surface with <br />several probable faults and old workings exposing uranium and vanadium bearing sandstones. <br />The aerial photographic map shows the extent of roads, trails and old workings and mines in the <br />area. The appendix also includes photographs of many of the recorded sites, showing the <br />vegetation of the permit area. <br />The ore is in reduced parts of the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation which is of <br />fluvial origin with interbedded sandstones and mudstones. These rocks were deposited with <br />sandstone layers separated by silty mudstone beds which create up to five or six beds or <br />"benches" of ore bearing sandstone. Ore grade mineralization is found in each of these benches <br />and ranges from less than a foot to more than 12 feet thick in the area. The ore bodies are often <br />in convoluted "rolls" and associated with higher concentrations of carbonaceous material. <br />Earliest miners would selectively mine only fossilized logs creating very narrow tunnels as they <br />removed high grade pitchblende from the outcrop. Much mining in the early 1900s was for <br />vanadium ore, recognized by the dark gray and black colors and its heavy and dense character. <br />In the forties, with the advent of the atomic age, miners in the area would locate outcropping <br />uranium bearing deposits with Geiger or other scintillation counters and then mine the ore by <br />driving adits from the sides of canyon walls in the nearly horizontal sandstone beds. Later <br />exploration was aided by drilling vertical holes from the surface, or top of the mesa, mapping the <br />radioactive ore bodies by drilling close spaced boreholes and directing the underground mining <br />to the higher grade deposits. The historic activity is evidenced by roads and trails used by <br />drillers and as haul roads for ore trucks and buggies from the numerous surface and underground <br />mining operations. These roads or trails are readily seen in aerial photographs (see Map C-2) <br />and will be utilized for continued exploration drilling of the Last Chance Mine permit area <br />thereby minimizing surface disturbance. Historic adits are present in the same or lower elevation <br />sandstone benches to the east (Banner and Bull Moose claims) and higher elevation sandstones <br />southeast (unnamed on the Paul claims and the Pluto Mine). Also the Ball Point Mine is west of <br />the permit area. At least two sandstone horizons in the Last Chance Mine are ore bearing. <br />Nuvemco is the operator of the Last Chance Mine on Last Chance Claims Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 in <br />Section 12 of Township 46 North, Range 18 West, (NMPM). Nuvemco also controls the <br />unpatented claims surrounding the proposed permit area. <br />2. Underground Mining <br />As shown on several of the maps in Section C, the Last Chance Mine includes an adit which <br />enters at an elevation of about 6280 feet and proceeds horizontally to the southeast for about 50 <br />feet where a dry room has been constructed. The mine then begins a decline in the same <br />direction about 400 feet to the main working level at an elevation of about 6150 feet (about 145 <br />feet below surface). The tunnels are generally about 8 feet high by 9 feet wide and extend <br />Last Chance Mine - April 2009 <br />D-1