West Perth-based Uranium Equities Ltd's 16.6 per cent-owned subsidiary Urtek LLC will develop process technology for uranium extraction under an agreement with what the company calls a significant phosphoric acid producer.
West Perth-based Uranium Equities Ltd's 16.6 per cent-owned subsidiary Urtek LLC will develop process technology for uranium extraction under an agreement with what the company calls a significant phosphoric acid producer.
The full text of an Uranium Equities announcement is pasted below
Urtek LLC enters into a technology agreement with a phosphoric acid producer to further develop process
technologies to extract uranium from phosphoric acid.
Urtek LLC, in which Uranium Equities Limited holds 16.66% with the right to increase to 90% through funding of up to US$15.0 million, has entered into a technology agreement with a significant phosphoric acid producer to jointly develop process technology to extract uranium from wet phosphoric acid streams from phosphate rock.
The joint project expands on the work Urtek has done to date and will be conducted in 2 Phases each of which has a decision point at its conclusion.
Phase 1 will comprise evaluation of work to date concluded by Urtek as well as evaluation of the producer's past experience with removing uranium from its wet phosphoric acid streams. Expenditure for Phase 1 is estimated at US $500,000 which will be contributed solely by Urtek.
At the conclusion at Phase 1 the parties will decide whether to move to Phase 2 which would be directed towards optimizing key areas for future development as identified in Phase 1. If a positive decision is made to move to Phase 2 then expenditure on this Phase, which is currently budgeted to be US $1,000,000, would be borne 50:50 as
between the parties.
It is estimated Phase 1 will conclude towards the end of September 2007 and Phase 2 by late March 2008.
Upon completion of Phase 2, the parties will evaluate as to whether to continue the project and if so the appropriate terms and conditions for future development.
Intellectual property developed during the project will be owned jointly by the parties except for certain intellectual property expressly reserved individually by the parties.
Mark Chalmers, Uranium Equities Managing Director said:
"The entry into this technology development agreement enables Urtek to continue development of its uranium extraction processes directly with a commercial phosphoric acid producer. Whilst the technology development is at an early stage the ability to enter into this development agreement allows a more practical and rapid evaluation of processes developed to date to extract uranium from wet phosphoric acid streams. The main focus of the new
technologies being developed by Urtek is to improve on past cost structures while at the same time minimizing other operational issues which resulted from using the past uranium extraction technologies. If we can achieve success in these endeavours, I believe we may unlock an exciting new source of global uranium production. "
