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Western Uranium Announces Plan to Re-Open the Sunday Mine Complex
TORONTO and NUCLA, Colo., Oct. 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. (CSE: WUC) (OTCQX: WSTRF) (“Western” or the ”Company”) announces it
About this update from Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp.
[{"type":"text","content":"TORONTO and NUCLA, Colo., Oct. 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. (CSE: WUC) (OTCQX: WSTRF) (“Western” or the ”Company”) announces its intention to re-open the Sunday Mine Complex (“SMC”). Western is commencing this program with the goals of upgrading the vanadium resource and monetizing these already significant vanadium resource holdings. Increased demand for vanadium in high-strength steel and accelerating battery metal demand for vanadium flow battery applications has driven vanadium prices from USD$10 to USD$30 during 2018. This large price increase is driven by a global supply deficit, and most notably new Chinese building code standards requiring vanadium rebar strengthening effective next month (November 2018). China, the world’s largest vanadium producer and vanadium consumer, has exacerbated the supply deficit by becoming a net importer through the consumption of vanadium supply that was formerly available to end users from other countries. Consequently, Western is in discussions with multiple potential customers and joint venture partners who are requesting ore samples. Given the vanadium commodity price appreciation over the past six months, Western is accelerating production planning at the SMC in anticipation of sourcing an agreement sufficient to baseload the SMC. In conjunction with re-opening the SMC, Western plans to further define the existing high-grade vanadium resource that has been identified on this property. (For further details, see the Technical Report dated July 7, 2015 prepared under Canada’s National Instrument 43-101 by Anthony R. Adkins, CPG, on the SMC (the “SMC Technical Report”), a copy of which has been filed at www.sedar.com as well as on the Company’s website.) Management of Western believes the historic SMC vanadium resource estimate reported in the SMC Technical Report is significantly understated because: (1) only a small proportion of the SMC resource property has been drilled or mined, (2) the historic 6:1 vanadium/uranium ratio was calculated from past production during primary uranium campaigns, (3) the majority of past production would have bypassed superior grade vanadium deposits in favor of deposits with higher uranium grades, and (4) technological limitations of legacy drilling and analysis techniques that were employed for past ex...