A review of the geological setting and economic potential of uranium occurrences in the proterozoic part of the Reguibat Shield of the west African Craton, in northern Mauritania

Abstract

Uranium mineralisation is formed in a wide range of geological settings, including deep magmatic to surficial conditions, and ranges in age from Archean to recent. The success of exploration planning and the choice of efficient extraction methods in an environmentally sustainable manner depend clearly on the understanding of the uranium genesis model and the detailed knowledge of the mineralogy of the deposit.

Mauritania hosts eighty known uranium occurrences, mainly located in the oriental part of the Reguibat Shield. Some of these occurrences have been evaluated with the publication of estimated resources, and even exploratory mining works have been performed on some of them. However, the detailed genetic conditions prevailing for the genesis of most of these occurrences remain poorly studied. Exploration reports indicate that uranium mineralisation in the Reguibat Shield mainly occurs as high temperature deposits hosted by shear zones in granites (hydrothermal Na-metasomatic deposits) and low temperature deposits hosted by calcretes (Calcrete deposits), which form more than 70% of these occurrences.

This paper focuses on the dominant uranium mineralisation systems (uraniferous calcretes and Na-metasomatite) of the oriental part of the Reguibat Shield and, to a lesser extent, other types of uranium deposits. Na-metasomatites are mainly originating from Neobirimian granite and basic rocks and occur through hydrothermal fluids, inducing regional metasomatism along NNW–SSE trending shear zones. While uraniferous calcretes in the area are found as subsurface layers covering a Proterozoic basement made of granitoid and associated gabbro-diorite massifs intersected by a network of mafic dykes. The uraniferous calcretes result from the weathering of the Neobirimian (Paleoproterozoic) granitic basement. Carbonate and uranium minerals (carnotite and tyuyamunite) crystallize as cementation materials within the granite arena. Two types of Neobirimian granites have been identified: the first one being an orientated coarse-grained porphyritic brown to pink granite, while the second one is a porphyritic grey medium-grained granite, whose mineralogy is mostly made up of plagioclase, K-feldspar, quartz, and chloritized biotite, while magnetite, apatite, titanite, zircon, uranothorite, and monazite are the accessory minerals.