McClean Lake is an open pit uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. The property consists of two mineral leases covering an area of 980 ha and nine mineral claims covering an area of 3,148 ha. McClean Lake has the newest, most technologically advanced uranium mill in the world.

 

McClean Lake is a joint venture of AREVA Resources Canada (Cogema), Denison Mines and OURD (Canada). The mine is operated by AREVA.

Geology and Mineralization

The uranium deposits at McClean Lake lie near the eastern margin of the Athabasca basin in the Churchill Structural Province of the Canadian Shield. The bedrock geology of the area consists of Precambrian gneisses unconformably overlain by flat lying unmetamorphosed sandstones and conglomerates of the Athabasca Group. The Precambrian basement complex consists of an overlying Aphebian-aged supracrustal metasedimentary unit infolded into the older Archean gneisses. The younger Helikian- aged Athabasca sandstone was deposited onto this basement complex. The basement surface is marked by a paleoweathered zone with lateritic characteristics referred to as regolith.

 

There are a number of uraniferous zones on the property. Depths of the unconformity are shallow, rarely exceeding 175 metres, making open pit mining feasible.

 

McClean Lake includes the Sue A, B, C and E, the McClean North, the JEB deposits, and other prospects. Two of these deposits, JEB and Sue C, have been mined out. The JEB pit has been converted into the JEB tailings management facility and will receive tailings from Midwest, Cigar Lake, and McClean Lake ores. Special low-grade uranium-bearing waste from the Sue C deposit has been deposited in the mined-out Sue C pit.