By STACY O'BRIEN

Lethbridge Herald

Lester Vanhill first heard about the possible existence of uranium in southern Alberta during his time as a student at NAIT many years ago.

His instructor, Glenn Hartley, had been a geologist searching for the radioactive element in nuclear power's heyday in the '70s and the early '80s.

Twenty-five years ago, a company had found signs of uranium along the Waterton River.

The bottom fell out of the uranium market shortly after that discovery. With the supply of uranium high and the demand low, the price of uranium plummeted, companies stuck to tried and true sources of uranium such as the high-grade kind found in northern Saskatchewan and exploration of the element in all but the most likely places dropped off.

But a lot has changed since then.

In the past three years, the price of uranium has once again skyrocketed from around $10 a pound a couple years ago to more than $30 a pound today.

As a result, a half dozen companies have staked claims throughout southern Alberta stretching from Calgary to the Montana border and east toward Cypress Hills.

"For the last 25 years, there were nuclear weapons being decommissioned and . . . the material from the warheads was being used in nuclear reactors. All that material is pretty well used up or not available anymore," Vanhill says.

That, added with a growing demand for uranium to fuel new nuclear reactors coming online in India and China, has added to the booming market.

Vanhill, a prospector and owner of SandSwamp Exploration Ltd., didn't start searching southern Alberta by taking a pan out to a riverbed but by sifting through old databases and records about the geology in southern Alberta - many of which had hardly been touched for two decades.

Vanhill, who has lived with all the stereotypical notions about prospectors for years, says goodheartedly, "I don't have a donkey and, no, I don't have a mule. I don't even have a fuzzy hat or anything."

When he found southern Alberta had a geology similar to land in the United States that has sandstone-hosted deposits of uranium, then he knew he might be on to something.

Canada supplies one-third of the world's uranium each year from mines located in northern Saskatchewan. Some of the uranium is so high-grade and concentrated ,it needs to be mined by robots because its radioactivity is dangerous to miners.

Sandstone-hosted deposits differ from those uranium deposits because they're a much lower grade and the uranium isn't as concentrated.

But in a market where uranium prices appear to be doing nothing but climbing, the opportunity to find any new uranium deposits is appealing.

Vanhill, who considers himself a diamond hunter who happens to have a knack at finding uranium, says he first brought a diamond property to Firestone Ventures Inc. The company wasn't interested in his potential diamond property but it did want his possible uranium property.

Once Firestone Ventures Inc. bought that property, a staking rush started last March, with Firestone Ventures, Marum Resources Inc., North American Gem Inc., International Ranger Corp. and other companies staking claims to search for uranium in and around southern Alberta.

"There was a bit of a staking rush that stretched all the way from Calgary down to the Waterton area and east across towards the Cypress Hills," says Reg Olson, leader of the Northern Resources development section at the Alberta Geological Survey.

It was in one of Olson's reports that had a reference to a uranium occurrence along the Waterton River. A uranium occurrence shows signs there could be uranium in an area compared to a uranium deposit which is a substantial amount of uranium.

So far, Olson says the only potentially significant deposit of uranium in the province is in northern Alberta near a portion of the Athabasca Basin that stretches from northern Saskatchewan into Alberta.

While southern Alberta has favourable geological formations for uranium, the companies prospecting in the area are only in the preliminary stages.

Some companies are moving ahead with their exploration quicker than others. North American Gem Inc., in collaboration with International Ranger Corp., has a property just south of Milk River known as the Whiskey Gap Project. The slightly over 44,000 acres of land at Whiskey Gap has shown high radon numbers. Radon is a naturally occurring gaseous radioactive inert element and when it's present it suggests uranium could be present as well.

"Radon. It's a derivative of uranium and it doesn't last. It only lasts for 3.8 days. So if you find it, you're near a source of uranium, and when you're getting these impressive radon samples, it means there should be something significant right there," says Charles Desjardins, president and director of North American Gem Inc.

Radon is a sort of daughter product of uranium. It's one of the things prospectors look for when they search a property for uranium.

Desjardins says North American Gem Inc. could start drilling for uranium in the next two weeks at the Whiskey Gap Project. They've already applied for the permits to do so and have a drill ready to go.

Drilling is the next step taken by prospectors after initially testing the area by ground or air for signs of radioactivity to see if there might be any uranium present. The drilling isn't a form of mining but a way to take samples to test for uranium.

Desjardins expects to drill around 20 holes down 400 feet each to see if the underground formation looks as promising as the readings from above ground have seemed.

"One drill hole could change everything, which is the exciting, fun part, but high risk. One drill hole could make a huge difference," he says.

Desjardins, whose experience has been in a variety of high-risk ventures from high tech to bio tech and mining, says there is a lot of potential in this.

"I think there potentially could be a whole new industry there," Desjardins says.

With the price of gasoline and other energy sources steadily rising, people are looking at other energy sources and nuclear power is one of them, Olson says.

It could have an effect on the southern Alberta economy, bringing jobs at all stages of the development from the initial prospecting which is going on to the eventual development of uranium in the area if a substantial deposit is found, Vanhill says.

For now all of the companies are mostly at the grassroots stage.

"What these companies are really doing is reconnaissance or grassroots exploration. They're at the very early stages of the exploration. They're trying to find places where there may be radioactivity," says Olson. "Time will tell whether they'll find anything of any consequence."

He says for there to be a new industry it will take not only the discovery of a substantial deposit in southern Alberta but also a discussion among the province and Albertans about how they feel about the development.

For mining to take place, a number of approvals must go through the federal government and the province. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has regulatory authority over uranium and regulates the possession and use of nuclear substances and equipment and their development and use. For uranium development to go ahead, the province would also have to give approval for exploration, surface disturbance, the collection and storage of mineral samples and for the collection of royalties.

So far, Marum Resources Inc. has staked a large track of land, around 250,000 acres, south of Fort Macleod and North American Gem Inc. has staked around 200,000 acres of property south of Milk River close to the American border and just over 44,000 in collaboration with International Ranger Corp.

Firestone Ventures Inc. has more than 110,000 acres of land between Pincher Creek and the Piikani First Nation, between the Piikani First Nation and Blood Reserve and south of Cardston.

Lori Walton, president and CEO of Firestone Ventures Inc., says her company chose southern Alberta as a spot to look for uranium because as a smaller company more developed areas like the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan were too expensive to acquire land.

"We came across southern Alberta and it was wide open and it wasn't recognized as a uranium district yet. We just jumped at the opportunity to get involved at an early stage," she says.

Walton has more than 20 years experience in the mining industry in both B.C. and the Yukon, having worked as a senior mineral development adviser for the Yukon Department of Energy, Mines and Resources before heading up Firestone Ventures Inc.

She says southern Alberta also appealed to the company because if they find the kind the uranium they think they might it will likely be able to be extracted using the ISL method (In-Situ Leach Mining).

Rather than digging down into an open pit or mining underground the ISL method pumps water and an acid or carbonate solution down into the geological formation the uranium is attached to precipitating it out and then pumps the water back to the surface through another well. Very little of the surface ground is disturbed and the mining doesn't leave an open pit.

"It basically just cleans out a formation of its uranium," Vanhill says. The method has been used for the past couple decades in Texas and Wyoming.

But there is a possible concern.

"The whole issue is can you control the fluid flow and ensure you're getting the stuff coming up the extraction well and not going somewhere else into the groundwater," Olson says. "But I'm not an engineer and I don't know a lot about the details."

Vanhill wonders why more exploration hasn't gone on for minerals before in Alberta.

"There's no reason why more land isn't staked here right now. It's just when people think Alberta they think oil and gas. But we've got some of the most diverse geology here in Canada and it's under-explored," Vanhill says. "I can see in the future that eventually minerals will mean a lot more to Alberta than they do at this point in time."

© 2005 The Lethbridge Herald. All rights reserved.