Nikolai Prospect Could Answer Domestic Need for Nickel – Alaska Business Magazine

Though the need to develop a homegrown source of nickel is clear, finding a path toward domestic production isn’t so simple.

“Nickel is a really tough metal to find,” Beischer says. “It’s not distributed over the surface of the Earth very well. It only occurs in specific types of rocks, and geologists have been looking hard for it for over a century because it’s such a good use for steel.”

Then there’s the fact that its widespread application means the “easy pickings” have already been used, forcing geologists to work harder to locate deposits.

“It’s going to be very difficult for us exploration geologists to keep up with the demand that’s going to be placed on us to find more nickel,” Beischer says. “And so I think, as a result, our industry will be forced to mine lower concentration deposits. The rich, high-grade deposits, the easy pickings, have already been found. Low-grade can work, so long as it’s homegrown.”

Beischer thinks AEM can find those deposits at Nikolai, and the company began initial drilling at the site in June. The area had “quite a series of historical holes,” some previously explored by Beischer and his former Inco Limited crew. Each of those holes, he says, intersected the mineralized zone at almost the same grade or concentration of metal in the ground, but they weren’t enough for AEM to estimate potential yield.

“Those historical holes are spread a little far apart for us to be able to calculate a tonnage or concern that we can rely on,” he explains, “so we set out to drill our own holes on a grid pattern, with 300 meters spacing, that will allow us to do just that.”

AEM drilled 4,000 meters between June and September, gathering enough information to publish an initial maiden resource in the spring. The company will update its resource calculation after next summer’s drilling, which Beischer hopes will be two to three times more than the 2023 season.

“Over the course of the fall and by next March, we’ll be able to determine a tonnage over a certain concentration,” he says. “As long as the grade and thickness hold up, then we should have several billion pounds of nickel metal in the ground, as well as the accessory metals that go with it, which includes copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and even a little bit of gold. That should be a big move for our company.”

AEM has begun early engineering work for the pre-feasibility study and started the baseline water quality and environmental work. Beischer anticipates concerns about mine development in the area if the project goes forward, but believes Nikolai is “in a really permittable place.”

“The creeks and rivers that flow off the project area are those really silty, glacial creeks that really don’t support any fish life at all,” he says. “With no salmon spawning anywhere near the project, I think that really helps in permitting. There are no people that live immediately nearby, and there are no archaeological places in the immediate project area, so I think we’re in a very good permittable site.”

For now, Beischer says the focus is on determining whether Nikolai is, if not the complete answer, then at least part of the solution to securing the country’s energy future.

“Right now, it’s an exploration project,” he says. “Soon, I hope we can call it a development project, but it’s probably a decade away in the best-case scenario from being a mine.”