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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (41037)	5/25/2007 12:42:24 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78421

So we know Quin is an amateur and they are blowing smoke about mining copper up in the Yukon. That is what I thought. Who are they trying to kid? I have been up there and there is only ice gold an tourists around, and except for the ice, paltry amounts of those. It was teevee who was thumping the tub about Sherwood a while back.. do we get to burn him in effigy if this goes south? Did you know that there is very little gold around Whitehorse...? I panned a bunch of streams around there and coming up empty I asked a geo about it. He said, well there is some copper in these parts but very little gold. We went in on a heli ride about 70 miles NW of there and looked at Tintina Mine's 150 million ton moly Red Mt. Deposit. They told me there was very small copper in it, but the company blurbs do not say so. It is about 0.15% moly? There is one in the area that is 200 million tons and 0.20% moly.. At that time the deposit was uneconomic. I note however that the Yukon Hydro has it listed as a potential development as it would require a 70Km transmission line. I decided to take a look recently at a list of Yukon porphyry copper and moly deposits and I noted with surprise that the map looked like it had the measles - with spots representing substantial copper and other porphyryies! I mean there were dozens of them! And I mean substantial. If not scores. I think it was closer to scores. And not small either. If I said there were 5 billion tons of porphyries in the Yukon, I would not be exaggerating much. emr.gov.yk.ca geology.gov.yk.ca A geo who was on our board tried to get me to drill a potential porphryry in that area, actually in AK. I turned the idea down, as it looked too hard to finance. I am beginning to think it was a matter of timing. Time to start taking another look at the area, as prolific and 'understudied', if there is such a term. It is time I stopped listening to brokers and put the geo hat back on. The Yukon and its environs is just a place where people need to take another long hard look. And a serious long hard look. Personally if I were 100 km from the grid, or even far less, I would build windmills, use solar power, and put in zinc air batteries and tractor train the fuel in. Sound crazy? Well you can get windmills made now off the shelf for 3.8 million installed for 3.8 megawatts. Even a large mine installation would only require say 40 megs. That is 15 windmills producing 57 megawatts for 70% power duty cycle. 57 million. A battery/solar cell and chopper system would cost say 5 million for 62 million total cost capex. You may have to add a couple of windmills for the efficiency of the chopper. And to be fair the size of the battery system would have to be substantial. Enough to store about 21 days power, with a Vanadium-ion solution pump preferred. That cost might run to ten million, so perhaps the cost for a 40 meg unit might be closer to 70 million and you could throw in another million for envi studies. Sound pricey? well look at the cost of grid power, often touted as the lower cost option. Transmission line costs about 1 million a mile so at 62 miles it sounds like break even. But the cost to produce once in place is very low with the wind system so we can take the running cost down to low bucks, perhaps 1/2 a cent a kw. NPV of that is only 12 million for 15 years. So all up wind is 83 million for a really big generator. It may cost 10 cents a KW for grid power, so 40 megs would be 35 million a year for let's say 15 years. Net present value of that power at 10% interest is 266 million dollars, plus the cost of t-line installation - we are talking 328 million .. so it is apparent that windmills win out handily over connecting to grid power at 10% interest and for the costs of power at the rates indicated. NPV = annual * (1-(1/((1+i)^n))/i) At 6 cents a KW and $500,000 a mile it's no picnic for a 40 meg installation. It's still 159 million NPV for the power and 30 million for the Capex for the t-line. 189 million at 10 percent discount rate. This is not surprising, as literature indicates that wind power can be generated for about 3 cents a kw, whereas I don't know a jurisdiction anywhere that can deliver grid power for anywhere near that figure. EC<:-}