Location

Energia has five granted licences that comprise the Gorno Project, two granted licences at Val Camonica, one application at Novazza and one application at Val Vedello (Figure 14). All are located in the foothills of the southern Alps, within the Bergamo district of the Lombardia Province of Italy, situated 60-90km northeast of Milan. Access to the area is on sealed roads along the Val Seriana (Seriana Valley) via Bergamo from Milan. The area is rugged topography varying in altitude from 800 to 2000m.

Figure 14. Lombardia Projects - location plan

Project Geology and Exploration History

The prospective areas lie within Palaeozoic and Mesozoic sequences that are preserved as tectonic slices in the younger Cenozoic-Recent orogenic event that formed the Southern Alps during the continental collision of Africa and Europe. Local correlations throughout the region are hampered by numerous younger thrust faults. The Gorno and the Val Camonica licences cover base metal occurrences hosted in mid-Triassic sediments that formed a widespread platform and shelf sequence dominated by carbonates with lesser clastic sediments and rare but numerous distal volcanic units.

By contrast, the applications at both Novazza and Val Vedello cover occurrences of volcanogenic or vein-hosted uranium-polymetallic mineralisation that is hosted in lower Permian volcanics and volcanogenic sediments that originally developed in fault-bounded extensional basins over metamorphic basement prior to the platform cover sequences.

This region of Italy has a long history of mining extending back to the Roman period. More recently, work by the by various State-controlled Italian companies resulted in delineation of historical mining areas at Gorno, location of prospective outcrops at Val Camonica and discovery of the Novazza and Val Vedello mineralised systems. Activities throughout Italy by all these entities waned during the 1980’s and by 2000 all the prospective areas were free of tenements.

The Novazza deposit (Figure 15) was discovered by leading Italian government-owned company AGIP SpA (now ENI SpA) in 1959 (and which is within Energia’s application area). It is situated on a forested hill slope at about 1000m altitude. Mineralisation comprises the uranium oxide pitchblende associated with massive sulphides (predominantly sphalerite). It is hosted by a Permian felsic volcanic sequence and is interpreted to be volcanogenic in origin. It is likely that this style of mineralisation will be responsive to a range of ground based geophysical techniques and it is significant that a number of other, less well-investigated uranium occurrences are known in the area.

AGIP SpA conducted extensive drilling (predominantly underground diamond totalling 2000m) and underground development (6,000m). Work ceased after the passing of a national referendum of 1987 calling for no new developments of nuclear power in Italy. It is significant, however, that the Italian government in July 2009 passed new laws to select sites for the construction of new nuclear reactors and to establish a regulatory authority responsible to manage their development.

Figure 15. Geological plan – Novazza Project