As pointed out, Tiris is unique. The uranium is locked in...

As pointed out, Tiris is unique. The uranium is locked in carnotite which is deposited between larger pieces of rock. All material is loose and no crushing is required. If you remove larger pieces of rock you end up getting higher concentration of uranium in a smaller mass. Its kind of a simple processes in which you separate materials based on size using screens. You can't do this with other projects where you need to crush solid rock.

'Beneficiation and upgrading

Simple washing and screening tests have yielded exceptional results. Wet screening at 75 µm resulted in the rejection of 80% by weight with the retention of 91% of the uranium into the screen undersize. This is within the duty range of modern commercial screening equipment. In further testwork splitting at even finer sizes, 89% by weight was rejected when splitting at 10 µm, while remarkably still retaining 86% of the uranium into the -10 µm fraction. The average concentration of the -10 µm product was 2,500 ppm U3O8. This represents a Page 4 of 10 sevenfold upgrade factor from the 334 ppm resource grade. Separations down to sizes such as this may be achievable using well-established processes such as hydrocyloning. A fivefold upgrade factor has been used in this Scoping Study. These exceptional results may be explained by the extremely fine size and ready liberation of the uranium mineral, carnotite, and the large difference in particle size distribution between the carnotite and the bulk of the host rock minerals.

Uranium Extraction

Following a series of encouraging small-scale preliminary tests, a standard leach test on -300 µm beneficiated material confirmed exceptional results, with 92% uranium extraction within 4 hours and 95% after 8 hours. This compares, for example, with the 92% extraction in 36 hours at Paladin’s Langer Heinrich Project. This result may also be explained by the very fine size of the carnotite and its high degree of liberation'.

http://www.auraenergy.com.au/assets/aee_tiris_(reguibat)_scoping_study.pdf