The Western Nuclear Mine

It is usually the prospector who is the "lead dog" in the search for minerals. By dint of hard work and persistence, prospectors come up with, not necessarily the bonanza, but enough clues and teasers to attract the well-heeled operators into an area. Such was the case of the final discovery of what became known as the Western Nuclear Mine, in the Hanson Lake area. It was in the early fifties that George Findlay went into the Hanson Lake area. He had this to say . . . .

We flew into Hanson Lake next. We took Archie Ramsay along. He made a copper discovery there and we found some uranium stains in pegmatites. They didn't amount to much, so we didn't bother staking them. We were east 2 or 3 miles of where Share Oil (financial backer of the Western Nuclear Mine) put a mine into production in the sixties. I held no interest in Archie's copper showing. They did drill there. It was on Keputch Lake.

Archie was a loner and had no partner at the time, so we took him along, he had no grub. I know they drilled the Keputch Lake showing but apparently, it didn't stand up. But Archie got a few dollars out of it anyway.

It was through the efforts of Lew Parres that the lead-zinc-copper-silver orebody was discovered at the south end of Hanson Lake. Lew tells the story . . . . .

We had flown an airborne magnetic and scintillometer survey, practically from Herb Lake, Manitoba, to the west side of Deschambault Lake in Saskatchewan. This was mostly over the limestone, the Paleozoic rocks, to determine what was in the underlying Precambrian rocks. There were areas at Hanson Lake where we crossed the Precambrian and we found a very interesting anomaly at the south end of the lake. The people in charge didn't want to stake it. I had to go out and stake it on my own against their wishes. Then subsequently I turned it into the Parrex Syndicate, which was my name with an "x" on the end instead of an "s". Eventually, the anomaly turned out to be the orebody at the south end of Hanson Lake that ultimately was mined by Western Nuclear.

In any mining operation, the usual hope of the financier is to get a cash flow, and the exploration dollars to find more ore, replacing the ore being mined out. This orebody was quite rich. I think it was the richest ore in the whole area. It was zinc, lead, silver, and copper. Five ounces of silver per ton, 1 percent copper, 17 percent lead, and, I believe, around 9 percent zinc. It's real good ore.

Further exploration might have proved additional tonnage and reserves to keep a profitable operation going. They mined out the rich part of the orebody. I'm not saying they "high-graded" it, but what I'm trying to say is that there should have been more exploration done before they started to mine, in order to prove additional tonnage.

The challenge of a mining operation is to locate new ore, to replace at least part of what is being mined out. In the case of the Western Nuclear operation, the search for additional ore was unsuccessful. Gordon Bragg was the exploration geologist towards the end of the operation and said . . . .

I came into the picture in November of 1968 as their exploration geologist to try and find more orebodies in the area, as it was apparent at that time that the life of the operation was rapidly coming to a close.

At that time, we had ore left in the mine up until about June of 1969, and that's about precisely what happened. I think the mine ran out of ore in the summer or early fall of 1969. At that time all the production people left and the place closed down and was mothballed, but we continued in exploration to try and find something to re-activate the operation.

At the start, a joint venture was designed between Western Nuclear and Share Mines and Oils to bring this property into production. The reason was that Western Nuclear was involved in an expansion and diversification program from their Wyoming and New Mexico operations. They were moving in the middle sixties into Australia, Africa, and Canada, with the idea that they were going to become a multinational corporation. And this was the place they chose. They must have received a submission of some kind.

The discovery goes back much earlier than that. My knowledge of it stems from the days when I was working with Hudson Bay and we were working in the Hanson Lake area. We had just missed, by a few hundred yards, surveying the area. Whether or not we would have picked anything up, I don't know. The discovery was not on our ground. There has been quite a lot of debate as to how much of the magnetic anomaly was actually over the deposit.

In any case, the discovery was made by Lew Parres, and the drilling done at that time established that there was a deposit of potential economic interest.

Then, I think, the property was optioned to Gunnar Mines (it was Bill Dick who was involved with the property for a while). I believe they did a little bit of work on it and came to the conclusion that it was not an economic deposit. I don't know whether the property was ever submitted to Hudson Bay in those days or not. If it was, I wasn't around at the time. The general hearsay was that it was a pretty marginal thing and it wasn't until this group from across the line came in that it was decided to have a crack at it.

The short-run the mine experienced was probably due to some mistakes made in the early programming, and the feasibility, that was done on the property. I would prefer not to make any comments, or give personal opinions, on that. Except that the ore reserves were very minimal to start with. It was estimated that there were a quarter of a million tons of, I think, 22% combined lead and zinc, with a possible opportunity for an extension at depth, although the bottom looked pretty ragged.

When Western Nuclear undertook to bring the property into production they also intended to supplement the Hanson Lake orebody with the Keputch Lake deposit, which has a copper body of moderate size, but it looked like the two of them could give the property a six or seven-year life. They carried on with this idea. They put in a substantial mill and went ahead and mined out the orebody.

There was this problem as to how much would have to be left for a crown pillar (between the bottom of the lake and the top of the mine openings), but it turned out that the orebody was found to narrow up near the bottom of the lake, so there wasn't much ore lost in the crown pillar. It might have been partly where the shortfall came in, but the result was they mined 160,000 tons of ore, and this alone, of course. This shortfall from the 250,000 would render the whole operation uneconomic. Also, the grade was off a bit. It mined out at about 17% combined, instead of 22%. It was a narrow orebody to start with and, I think, possibly the dilution factor allowed for was not high enough in the original calculations. Another problem in the original calculations was that the net smelter returns weren't accurately calculated, with the result that the returns to the company were considerably less than had been projected.

The Keputch Lake deposit - was re-calculated, re-evaluated, and more holes were drilled by Western Nuclear. The final consensus of that was, that because the price of copper was falling at the time, it wasn't justified to bring it into production. This was the Archie Ramsay discovery.

I had gone to the property when I was with Hudson Bay in the fifties when Archie was opening up the trenches. At that time we were favourably impressed and recommended that Hudson Bay option the property, but Archie was not interested in options at the time. He wanted to do more work on it.

By the time the Keputch Lake deposit got back to Hudson Bay, Archie had optioned it to Tombill Mines and they went ahead and did a job on it. Then Hudson Bay got an option, and they did some drilling and relinquished the option.

I don't know whether there were any other companies involved before that, but Western Nuclear then came in with their drilling, and they found a major extension of the shoot to depth, which Hudson Bay had missed with their drilling. The preliminary reading on it was that it was an economic deposit. But based upon the drilling done by Western Nuclear in 1969-70 and a complete re-calculation, it was suggested that it was uneconomic from the point of view of Western Nuclear. They were in considerable trouble at the time with the main mine, which never did make any money.

Canadian caper. And then to turn the sword in the wound, when they finally dealt off the mill to an outfit in British Columbia - Share Mines and Oils in the original agreement entitled them to a 50% share of the sale of the mill which was considered profit in the agreement. Western Nuclear appealed the decision, but the appeal, I think, was not successful. So they took a real licking on the whole operation. They put up the total financing, so actually Share Oils got 50% of the proceeds of the sale of the mill for no investment whatsoever. Possibly it's still in litigation.

The property at Keputch Lake is sometimes known as the Quandt deposit. I think that Allan K. Quandt must have put up some of the money for Ramsay.