Welcome to Nuclear Update.

If you spend enough time around nuclear engineers, one question eventually comes up:

“Where does all the uranium actually come from?”

Not the part where it gets enriched or fabricated or delivered to a reactor, but the part before all of that.

The part where someone has to find it.

Today I am taking you behind the curtain of how uranium is actually discovered, and using a case study to make it tangible, F3 Uranium (TSX-V: FUU, OTCQB: FUUFF), an explorer (not the Dora kind) working in the Athabasca Basin, one of the richest uranium regions on Earth.

F3 is the latest chapter for an award winning team that has already built and sold 2 Athabasca uranium companies, the first to Denison Mines and the second to Paladin Energy in a deal worth around 1.1 billion dollars.

But let’s start from the beginning.

🗺️What Counts as a “Discovery” Anyway?

A uranium discovery is not when a company announces a drill hole with good grades (that is just a data point).

A real discovery is when several things line up at the same time: the geological model begins to make sense, multiple holes start confirming the same story, the mineralization repeats along a structure, and the system shows enough room to grow.

It is only when all of those pieces click together that the geologists can shout “eureka.”

🔍 How You Look For Uranium

If you are looking for uranium, you don’t just start drilling random holes in the middle of nowhere. You start by picking the right neighborhood, places where the rocks, structure and history already suggest uranium could be present.

That is why so much work keeps coming back to known belts, like the Athabasca Basin in Canada, which often hosts uranium 10 to 20 times richer than the global average.

After you pick the right neighborhood, the work then starts with data collection and measurements. Exploration teams use surveys including both airborne and ground based electromagnetic, resistivity and gravity to locate conductive trends, and pathfinder geochemistry to pick up elements that often show up with uranium.

It is less Jedi instinct, “do not use the force, Luke”, and more droid work, careful data scanning to spot patterns and trends.

All of that is combined into a rough guesstimate; if uranium bearing fluids ever flowed through this part of the crust, they may have followed this structure, at about this depth, along this line.

When the team is comfortable with the model, the next step is drilling. The first holes are almost never exciting. You are just checking the basics: did we hit the right rock, is there hydrothermal alteration, do we see any sign of radioactivity, are we too shallow or too deep. The goal is to learn enough from each hole so the next one is less of a qualified guess and more of a proper test.

Over time, those small checks build into a picture. Either the data keeps pointing to a real system, or it tells you to move on. That is the grind behind every “new discovery” headline.

💡If You Actually Find Something

If the data keeps pointing to a real system, the work shifts from “is it there” to “how big could it be and what can we do with it”.

That means more drilling to tighten up the shape of the zone, estimate how much uranium is in place and understand the geometry well enough for engineers to start thinking about how it could one day be mined.

From there, projects usually follow one of two main paths.

Some companies try to take the project all the way themselves, moving further along the curve with economic studies and permitting, the work you need in place before a mine can ever be built.

Others decide they are better off handing the heavy lifting to someone bigger, so the project is sold or partnered with a larger company that specializes in building and operating mines.

F3 Uranium fits in this second camp.

🎯 Meet F3 Uranium

F3 Uranium is a Canadian uranium explorer focused on the Athabasca Basin. Their job is finding and advancing new uranium systems to the point where a mine builder can take over.

Their main project is Patterson Lake North (PLN) where they already have 2 discoveries on top of structures that are known to host uranium in this region.

JR Zone is a high grade uranium zone that F3 discovered in 2022, with drill holes that included intervals running into double digit U₃O₈ percentages. Tetra Zone is a new zone, 12 km south of JR Zone, that F3 just discovered this spring with high grade hits in a part of the project that had seen no modern drilling.

The mineralization at the JR Zone deposit is now defined enough that F3 Uranium commissioned SLR to perform a maiden resource estimate, which is currently underway and expected in Q4 2025.

Behind this work is a team that knows the district very well and have picked up some of the sector’s top exploration awards for their work at Patterson Lake South.

The team’s first Athabasca company, Fission Energy (“F1“), was sold to Denison Mines in 2013. Their second, Fission Uranium (“F2“), was acquired by Paladin Energy in a 2024 all stock deal valued at about 1.1 billion dollars.

F3 is the latest chapter in that story, but the playbook has been consistent; focus on the Athabasca Basin, make high grade discoveries, advance them through exploration and then look to monetize the project through a deal with a larger producer instead of trying to build and operate a mine themselves.

On the balance sheet side, F3 has around 28 million dollars in the bank (they just raised C$20 million in private placement), with roughly half of that budgeted for drilling. That gives the company room to run an aggressive program on JR and Tetra without needing to come back to the market immediately, a small but important detail for anyone who has sat through too many dilutive financings in past cycles.

Like any junior explorer, F3 sits in the high risk, high reward part of the sector.

Uranium prices can move sharply in both directions, and a weaker price environment would make financing and future project economics harder. On top of that are the usual uranium sector hurdles, permitting, environmental approvals and community engagement, all of which can add time and complexity.

In other words, F3 gives leverage to discovery and to the uranium cycle, but it comes with the exploration, financing and timeline risks that anyone in this corner of the market has to accept.

The flip side is that when the cycle lines up with a real discovery, stories like this can be powerful, especially in the hands of a team that has already turned two Athabasca discoveries into full takeovers in past uranium cycle - and is currently sitting on two new discoveries at JR and Tetra.

⚛️ Wrapping Up

Reactors are the part of nuclear everyone sees. Policy announcements are the part everyone debates. Exploration is the part that quietly decides whether any of that can actually happen.

F3 Uranium is one example of that process in motion. At Patterson Lake North, the JR Zone and the Tetra Zone are not just lines on a slide. They are evolving systems that show how exploration stands to create the raw material that future fuel supply will rely on.

Because before fuel ever shows up at a plant, someone has to find it in the first place.

– Fredrik

For more information on F3 Uranium’s work across the Athabasca Basin, visit their website at f3uranium.com or contact their investor relations team at [email protected]

Disclosure: This Deep Dive was created in collaboration with F3 Uranium, which sponsored this post. All analysis and opinions are those of Nuclear Update.

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. Nuclear Update is for informational and educational purposes only, it’s here to help you understand the world of uranium, energy, and the markets that orbit them, not to tell you what to buy or sell. Nothing in this article should be taken as a recommendation or solicitation to make any financial decision. Always do your own research, double-check sources, and talk to a licensed professional before making investments. Markets move fast, opinions change, and yes, sometimes even Fredrik gets things wrong.