Rare Element Resources
Bear Lodge Project
Canadian NI 43-101 Technical Report
October 9
th
, 2014
10135-200-46 – Rev. 0
1-11
1.4 Deposit Types
The Bull Hill deposit consists of an REE-mineralized carbonatite dike swarm and
associated enveloping stockwork zones located within and along the western margin
of the Bull Hill diatreme. Near-surface iron oxide-manganese oxide-rare earth (FMR)
and oxide-carbonate (OxCa) dikes and veins are interpreted to be intensely (FMR)
and moderately to weakly (OxCa) oxidized and leached equivalents of the
carbonatite dikes at depth.
The Whitetail Ridge deposit is located approximately 1,500 feet (460 meters)
northwest of the Bull Hill deposit and approximately 500 to 1000 feet (150 to 300
meters) west of the Bull Hill Northwest deposit.
The Whitetail Ridge deposit is characterized by about a 2.5X enrichment in overall
HREE element grade relative to the Bull Hill resource, which adds potential economic
upside to the Bear Lodge Project. The deposit remains open, and further drilling is
expected to expand the resource and better define the extent of the REE
mineralization.
1.5 Physical Upgrading Plant
The PUG plant is designed to use a combination of crushing, screening and gravity
separation, depending on the ore type being treated, to reduce the physical mass of
the ore by reducing gangue and concentrating the rare earth-bearing fines for
shipment to the Hydromet plant. The Bull Hill deposit contains varying proportions of
weathered high-grade oxide and oxide-carbonate ores. Each of these ore types will
have a different mass reduction and upgrade percentage in the PUG circuit. On
average, the PUG recovery is expected to be 92.8% in years 1-9 and 87.9% over the
LOM. The mineral pre-concentrate produced at the PUG will be transported by
covered truck to the Hydromet plant in Upton.
1.6 Hydrometallurgical Plant
The Hydromet plant is designed to process the pre-concentrate through acid leaching
followed by the Company’s proprietary recovery technology. This process uses a
chloride solution to extract the rare earth elements (REE) into a liquid, and then uses
oxalate reagents to facilitate the selective precipitation of the REE. The benefits of
this process are that it achieves a high-purity, near thorium-free, bulk TREO
