New horizons for groundwater geochemistry in uranium exploration

Abstract

Groundwater geochemistry assists in determining the character of deep geological or geophysical targets from a limited number of boreholes, refining location, size and orientation of host target zones, or directly demonstrating presence of alteration or mineralisation. By themselves, uranium analyses can be very misleading in applying groundwater to U exploration. Detailed analyses of multi-element data is required to properly interpret water data, sorting false from significant indicators. Examples from a range of Australian areas reinforce these comments and show that, sometimes, the U indicator is a mineral assemblage, not a U concentration. Ready availability of modelling software and chemical databases allow exploration implications from groundwater data to be easily accomplished.