Uranium exploration worldwide is once again growing. Exploration geologists are looking for unconformity related uranium deposits, the most common deposit type and well- known from Canada’s Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan, the world’s largest uranium resource. Other types of deposits include:

• Hematite breccia
• sandstone
• Quartz-pebble
• Surficial
• Vein
• Volcanic and caldera-related
• Intrusive
• Metasomite
• Collapse breccia pipe
• Phosphorite
• Metmorphic
• Lignite
• Black shale

The oreXpress, oreXplorer or oreXpert field geological spectrometers and EZ-ID mineral identification software, are well-suited for exploration geologists looking for all types of uranium deposits. Our rugged, field portable spectrometers can help geologists identify distinct geochemical signatures, alteration halos, associated with uranium mineralization. The following minerals are a few that can be identified and associated with alteration halos:

• Uraninite
• Sericite
• Chlorite
• Kaolinite
• Illite
• Dickite
• Pyrite
• Chalcopyrite

Every oreXpress, oreXplorer and oreXpert includes our DARWin SP Data Acquisition software and is available with EZ-ID and the Custom Library Builder Module. EZ-ID allows you to compare your target sample with a known library of mineral spectra. EZ-ID comes with the USGS spectral library and is available with the GeoSPEC library and SpecMIN library from Spectral International.

EZ-ID features:

• Fast and accurate identification of an unknown mineral to a known spectral library sample
• Ease-of-use: take your scan using an oreXpress or an SR-6500 and see results in real-time
• Simple, consistent user interface
• USGS, SpecMIN and GeoSPEC libraries available
• Weighted score for best matches
• Include or exclude spectral regions of interest for optimal results

Using an oreXpress, oreXplorer and oreXpert with EZ-ID delivers the following benefits for exploration geologists exploring for uranium:

• Quickly take a lot of samples
• Cover more ground in less time
• More accurate data provides a more complete picture of what you are looking at
• Less time and expense than waiting for samples to come back from the lab
• Less drilling – better results quickly delivers a return-on- investment

oreXpress field portable spectrometer for mineral identification

SPECTRAL EVOLUTION’S EZ-ID software has identified our target sample as kaolinite using the USGS spectral library for reference. The shaded areas shown in the scan allow a geologist to concentrate on regions in the spectra of particular interest.