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Santa Rosa Consession

(9,800 HA), San Luis

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The Santa Rosa concession of 9,800 hectares is in the Province of San Luis. Carnotite (uranium-vanadium oxide) encrusts caliche (areas mapped as yellow in the map, above).

The Santa Rosa concession of 9,800 hectares is near the town of San Luis in the Province of San Luis. This concession covers extensive deposits of caliche with encrustations of the yellow uranium mineral carnotite. The main showing of carnotite is on top of a caliche horizon at the margin of an ancient shallow open pit mine used for extracting carbonate-rich caliche for construction. However, carnotite encrustations are common on blocks of caliche thrown to the surface during the construction of irrigation ditches. The majority of the area is covered by a veneer of soil. The origin of the uranium is from ground water sucked to the surface by evaporative drive from an underlying prism of uranium-rich gravel derived from the “hot” Precambrian basement of granite and metamorphic rock to the west of the town of Santa Rosa.