Ross McElroy is the President, COO and Head Geologist for Fission Uranium Corp. – a uranium explorer spun out Fission Energy Corp in April 2013. The company has a major discovery in Canada’s Athabasca Basin as well as a selection of other highly prospective properties in the Athabasca and in the Macusani district of Peru. With his first years as a geologist spent with the Majors such as Areva, Cameco and BHP, Ross McElroy joined his first junior exploration company in 2007 and has specialized in the sector ever since.

Ross McElroy’s time with the majors enabled him to build a great network of highly trained professionals. It also trained him in every aspect of the mining business, so while his great love is exploration, he has an in-depth understanding of mine construction and production. He believes this has played a huge part in his success as an explorer.

In a recent interview with Stockhouse  he responds to why he left the majors was “I wanted to focus on the sharp end of exploration while also heading up the technical direction of the company and of course sharing in the rewards of discoveries. It’s just not possible to pursue all three of those ambitions when you’re with the Majors. When you look a Fission Uranium Corp – we have the skills of the majors but we act like a junior. We are front-line explorers.”

Ross McEloy is naturally a huge believer in uranium as a commodity as he feels that if you believe in the need for clean energy then you really have to believe in nuclear energy and that means uranium. The massive nuclear build out going on not just in China, Russia and India but worldwide shows the realities of the worldwide energy situation.

In case you missed it, we’ve just announced the addition of three new properties in the Athabasca Basin. I’ve pasted the body of the release below but it’s worth checking out the version on the Fission website as it has the relevant maps.

FISSION URANIUM CORP. (“Fission” or “the Company“) is pleased to announce the addition of three new properties, staked by Fission’s technical team, in the northwest and northeast Athabasca Basin regions, Canada. The newly acquired properties are referred to as Beaver River, Thompson Lake and Manitou Falls respectively. The new acquisitions are part of Fission’s objective to stake ground where Uranium mineralization is highly prospective and shallow, as is the case with its’ recent high grade discoveries at PLS and Patterson Lake (PLN) properties.

Beaver River and Thompson Lakes properties are located in the Beaverlodge district. Between 1953 and 1982 this area produced 25,142 tons of Uranium from 16 operating mines (Saskatchewan Industry and Resources Misc Report 2003-7). The Manitou Falls property is located within the eastern Athabasca Basin, where it overlies the Mudjatic domain basement rocks.

Ross McElroy, President, COO, and Chief Geologist for Fission, commented,

“While our primary focus remains expanding the PLS discovery, there are still many underexplored areas of the Athabasca Basin and we consider these new properties to be highly prospective additions to our growing portfolio.”

Highlights

Beaver River: Six claims totalling 15,373 ha located on the north-central edge of the Basin. The property includes most of the known electro-magnetic (EM) conductors in the area and a number of uranium showings including surface outcrop sample assays of 3.66%, 3.37%, and 2.93% U3O8. The Company considers this property to be highly prospective and aims to begin ground exploration work this summer in order to identify drill targets for a winter drill program.

Thompson Lake: Single claim of 1,188 ha is located approximately 15km west of Uranium City and is situated geologically approximately 10km north of the north-central area of the Athabasca Basin, approximately 5km west of the historic Lorado mine, where 89 tons of uranium were produced. The historic Gulch uranium deposit, reported at 310,000 tons of possible reserves at 0.09% U3O8 (SK ECON, Saskatchewan Mining Deposit Database) lies 2.5km to the south-west on strike of the property 15km from Uranium City. Previous exploration has identified numerous uranium showings including outcrop grab sample assays at this property include 2.23% and 0.11% U3O8.

Manitou Falls: Single claim of 2,941 ha located on the northeastern side of the Athabasca Basin. The eastern side of the Athabasca Basin is significant as it is home to all of Canada’s current production of uranium. The property benefits from a large amount of historical data from surveys and ground prospecting work that has identified six radiometric anomalies and multiple conductors.

Dev Randhawa

What recent TEPCO shares activity tells us

Tepco Shares Surge a Fourth Day on Reactor Restart Speculation – Bloomberg

Thanks To Abenomics, Japan’s Most Controversial Company Is Up 400% This Year – Business Insider

There are some pretty strong rumors out there that TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) is going to restart some of its reactors – all of which have been powered down since March 2011. The rumors are strong enough that the TEPCO share price skyrocketed this past week – hence the headlines in the Media.

Now I’ve got to say that while the TEPCO shares activity chart is very impressive it shouldn’t be a surprise. As we all know, the share price of Japan’s largest power company (by generation capacity) was all but wiped out after Fukushima. The colossal cost of importing fossil fuels instead of using the low-OPEX nuclear reactors, along with the costs of dealing with the reactor failures has nearly driven the company into the ground. Being able to restart some of its reactors is obviously going to have a massive (positive) impact on the company. However, that’s not the full story.

My point is this: there is simply no choice about restarting the reactors. To put it another way, it’s never been a question of if but rather when. Japan needs it’s fleet of reactors up and running. The country simply cannot afford to ditch nuclear energy. It is a crucial part of their long term energy mix from a cost, energy security and environmental perspective. The last two years without nuclear energy has quite literally cost the country $trillions, has driven up the global price of liquid natural gas and has driven up carbon emissions considerably.

There really isn’t a choice when it comes to nuclear energy – not for Japan, not for the rest of the world. It’s because of this that the fundamentals of the nuclear energy sector – and therefore the uranium sector – are rock solid and the recent TEPCO share price increase reflects that. Whether or not the restarts are just around the corner (and my personal opinion is that they are close indeed), they will happen. When they do, it won’t just be TEPCO shares that move up….

Dev Randhawa

Hi All,

Thought you might be interested in the newestFission Uranium corporate presentation. I’ll be delivering this in London this week.

Dev Randhawa

Earlier today I read a very interesting cost comparison between Offshore Wind vs Nuclear Energy for the Mid-Atlantic. The article, posted by Meredith Angwin on the Energy Collective website, includes a number of technical details. I’ve pasted the most interesting of them below. I found a number of the comments that followed the article just as interesting and would recommend you take a l

“With a project plan that envisages construction extending from 2016 – 2026, the developers intend to build out the offshore transmission backbone in five phases at a total expected cost of $6.311 billion. The capital cost of the IWTs (Industrial Wind Turbines) would be 7,000 MW x $4.2 million/MW = $24.53 Billion, for a total of $35.7 billion”

“For comparison: The capital cost of 7,000 MW of nuclear plants (7 standard 1,000 MW plants) would be about $28 billion and the energy production of would be 7,000 MW x 8,760 hr/yr x CF 0.90 = 55.20 TWh/yr; more than twice the production at much less capital cost. They could all be built in about 10 years, thereby reducing CO2 much sooner than the IWTs which would take 20 years“

“Based on the above, it appears the energy cost of the IWTs will be at least 20 c/kWh and of the nuclear plants about 10 c/kWh, per EIA/US-DOE.”

For me, the points that stick out are: more than twice the production at much less capital cost. Oh and a ten year build time for nuclear vs twenty for Wind.

The Wind Energy industry has received significant Media support over the years, while Nuclear Energy has received the direct opposite. In both cases the hard facts behind the two energy sources have rarely come to light. It’s important that articles like Meredith Angwin’s get the truth out there about the realities of renewable energy sources. We need to reduce worldwide emissions as fast as we can. There are no ‘cheap’ options for achieving this, however, in my opinion Nuclear energy remains to best way to reach the goal at a financial cost that the world’s economies can bear.

Dev Randhawa

Hi All,

Thought you might be interested in the latest Fission Uranium corporate presentation. I’ll be delivering this in London this week.

Dev Randhawa