{"id":1154289,"date":"2019-12-08T09:30:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T15:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mining.com\/?p=1008729"},"modified":"2019-12-08T09:30:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T15:30:35","slug":"wealth-minerals-and-rosatom-sign-mou-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1154289","title":{"rendered":"Wealth Minerals and Rosatom sign MOU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Russia\u2019s state nuclear group Rosatom and Canada\u2019s\u00a0Wealth Minerals\u00a0(TSXV: WML) are working towards a partnership at the junior\u2019s Atacama lithium project in northern Chile.<g class=\"gr_ gr_4 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear Style replaceWithoutSep gr-progress\" id=\"4\" data-gr-id=\"4\"> <\/g>The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under which Rosatom, through its subsidiary Uranium One Group, can earn up to a 51% stake in the project along with the right to purchase 100% of its offtake.<\/p>\n<div class='d-flex justify-content-center'>\n<div id='div-gpt-ad-1561499308230-0'><script>googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1561499308230-0');});<\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The MOU would give Wealth Minerals access to Rosatom\u2019s technology, which dispenses with the massive solar evaporation ponds that are used to extract lithium from the brine in high-altitude salars or basins. Rosatom\u2019s sorption technology, by contrast, employs a reusable catalyst material that attracts the lithium salt without using any heat in the process.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote alignright\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>The MOU would give Wealth Minerals access to Rosatom\u2019s technology, which dispenses with the massive solar evaporation ponds that are used to extract lithium from the brine in high-altitude <g class=\"gr_ gr_5 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear ContextualSpelling\" id=\"5\" data-gr-id=\"5\">salars<\/g><br \/> or basins<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The catalyst material adheres itself to the lithium and can then effectively be washed off and re-used. The remaining water \u2014 the brine without the lithium \u2014 is then pumped back into the salar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSolar evaporation requires enormous ponds to be bulldozed and left in place \u2014 they\u2019re huge \u2014 you can see them from outer space,\u201d says Tim McCutcheon, Wealth Minerals\u2019 president. \u201cYou\u2019re in the driest part of the planet and you\u2019re evaporating water off into the atmosphere \u2026 This technology ensures that the water table in the salar doesn\u2019t fall. It\u2019s really a breakthrough to the problem of recovering lithium in an ecologically friendly way and being competitive in terms of costs,\u201d he continues. \u201cThe trick here is their catalyst material, which by the way it has been formed can perform the recovery process without introducing heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McCutcheon acknowledges that other companies are experimenting with similar technologies, but says Uranium One\u2019s is much more advanced. When pressed for details of the catalyst material, he said he couldn\u2019t go into any specifics.\u2028\u201cIt\u2019s a big state corporation, so they\u2019re a little allergic to disclosure because it\u2019s not something they do \u2014 and this transaction for their size and scale is very small, so I can\u2019t tell you more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The priority now is for Rosatom to complete its due diligence on the Atacama project, and advance the MOU to a definitive agreement.\u2028McCutcheon says that while the deal was really technology-driven, the nuclear giant group through Uranium One was also one of the few companies to think creatively and \u201cstep up to the plate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason they\u2019re getting involved in the lithium space is that there are bigger plans to work down the value chain to higher value-added projects, and the offtake component of our MOU make that obvious,\u201d he says. \u201cThe lithium space is all about providing energy solutions, because the key thing about lithium ion batteries is that it allows you to manage energy inventory and storage \u2026 so in those terms this deal wasn\u2019t surprising at all \u2026 one reason they got into the uranium space is because they were building nuclear reactors all over the world, and it makes sense for them to provide fuel to their customers. So they\u2019re taking that one step further and saying, \u2018What other energy solutions can we provide?\u2019 \u2014 and that\u2019s what makes it kind of neat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, he says, when Wealth Minerals approached other large companies as strategic partners, management got nowhere. \u201cWe reached out to fertilizer companies, because if you can team up with one of those they have a use for potassium, which also comes from the same source as lithium, and so lithium would simply be an additional revenue stream for their existing business, but none of them really wanted to step up to the plate. Then we talked to battery makers, but they don\u2019t want anything to do with the actual mining side, and they want a turnkey project\u2026then we went to chemical companies because lithium is also used as a lubricant, but those conversations didn\u2019t go very far.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe opportunity for lithium companies is [that] your potential audience of strategic investors is huge, but you don\u2019t know who you should be talking to,\u201d he adds. \u201cIf you\u2019re a little gold company you aspire to being a Barrick. For a junior lithium company, you don\u2019t really know what to aspire to be. Albermarle has a wide spectrum of products they sell and lithium is just one of them, and SQM started out as a chemical fertilizer company. That\u2019s what\u2019s exciting about Uranium One. There\u2019s a clear vision to get involved in this industry and do things right from the very beginning, which is why this is the first thing they have done with a lithium raw material asset, but they already had the technology beforehand, so it has been a methodically planned out vision, and we\u2019re pretty excited to be part of it. And it\u2019s a pretty big corporation to have as your partner \u2014 they have 250,000 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, demand for lithium for lithium ion batteries will only grow. A report by Wood Mackenzie released on Oct. 28 noted that more than US$350 million was invested in advanced lithium-ion technologies during the first half of 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat makes the lithium space an outlier or different than everything else is there really aren\u2019t a lot of supply solutions for people,\u201d McCutcheon says. \u201cTwo mines \u2014 Greenbushes and the Atacama operations run by Albermarle and\u00a0Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile\u00a0(NYSE: SQM) \u2014 represent almost 70% of global production. So the reason why companies are backward integrating and securing raw material is because it\u2019s pretty clear there might not be enough raw material to go around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wealth Minerals\u2019 Atacama concessions cover an area of 462 sq. km in the northern part of the Atacama Salar in Region II of Chile. The Salar de Atacama hosts more than 15% of the world\u2019s known lithium reserves, but exploration and production of lithium has occurred only in the southern part of the salar, McCutcheon says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs the Atacama salar is one big geological structure, and based on our geophysical work, we are confident we will have similar material on our property package as the material being exploited directly to the south of us, about 15 km away, at operations run by SQM and Albemarle,\u201d McCutcheon says. \u201cThose operations have lithium bearing material grading at over 1,800 parts per million lithium, which is exponentially higher than anything else currently in production.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rosatom took control of Uranium One in January 2013, and the company was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange in October 2013.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>This article first appeared in the November 11-24, 2019 edition of\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"The Northern Miner (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.northernminer.com\/news\/wealth-minerals-and-rosatom-sign-mou\/1003810783\/\" >The Northern Miner<\/a>).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia&rsquo;s state nuclear group Rosatom and Canada&rsquo;s&nbsp;Wealth Minerals&nbsp;(TSXV: WML) are working towards a partnership at the junior&rsquo;s Atacama lithium project in northern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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