⚛️ Mining Without the Mine

Welcome to Nuclear Update.

When most people picture a uranium mine, they picture the wrong thing.

A gouged-out pit, a headframe over a shaft, haul trucks the size of houses carrying ore to a mill.

That picture is not wrong. It is just not the whole story anymore.

Most newly mined uranium in the United States now comes out of the ground a different way.

Through a quiet network of wells, a stream of fortified groundwater, and a much smaller surface footprint than the conventional mine most people imagine.

The method is called in-situ recovery or ISR for short.

After years of relying overwhelmingly on foreign uranium, and relying heavily on foreign fuel-cycle services such as enrichment, America is trying to rebuild more of its nuclear fuel supply chain at home.

And ISR is at the center of that effort.

This is a sponsored feature created in collaboration with Strathmore Plus Uranium Corp. (CSE: SUU) (OTCQB: SUUFF).

⚛️ Mining Without the Mine

Strip ISR down and it is almost disarmingly simple.

Operators drill two sets of wells into a uranium-bearing sandstone. Down the injection wells goes a mining solution, usually native groundwater fortified with oxygen and carbonate or bicarbonate chemistry.

The solution dissolves uranium underground, right where it sits, freeing it from sand grains it has clung to for millions of years.

The uranium-bearing liquid is then pumped back up through recovery wells, run through an ion-exchange plant, and processed into the canary-yellow powder the industry calls yellowcake.

What is striking is everything that does not happen.

No pit. No blasting. No mountain of waste rock. No conventional tailings dam from crushed ore.

The ore never moves. Only the water does.

Here’s a great animation of the process to help you wrap your head around it.

That does not mean ISR has no environmental responsibilities.

It still requires permits, monitor wells, groundwater protection, aquifer restoration, waste handling, and long-term regulatory oversight.

But compared with conventional mining, the surface disturbance is dramatically smaller.

⛏️ Why ISR Works in Wyoming

ISR does not work everywhere.

It needs uranium hosted in permeable, water-saturated rock, most famously the sandstone roll front.

Picture a slow chemical drama underground.

Oxygen-rich groundwater carries dissolved uranium through permeable sandstone until it reaches a boundary where the rock turns the water from oxidizing to reducing.

There, the uranium drops out of solution and plates onto the sand, building over time into a long, crescent-shaped band that early geologists thought resembled a breaking wave.

Hence the name roll front.

This leaves the uranium exactly where you want it for ISR.

Spread through porous sandstone that a solution can flow through. You do not need to break the rock, because the rock is already permeable.

That geology is one reason Wyoming became so important to American uranium.

The other reason is economics.

A wellfield-and-plant operation can cost far less than sinking a shaft, opening a pit, and building a conventional mill.

It can often be brought online faster, with less surface disturbance and fewer conventional mine-waste liabilities.

Because ISR avoids moving and milling large volumes of rock, it can also make lower-grade sandstone deposits workable, the kind that would struggle to justify a conventional mine.

Lower capital intensity. Smaller surface footprint. Shorter path to production.

Those are exactly the qualities a tightening market rewards.

⚛️ The Year the Wells Came Back On

And the market has tightened.

After years of depressed prices and heavy import reliance, utilities and policymakers have spent the past few years trying to rebuild more of the domestic nuclear fuel supply chain.

The U.S. still relies overwhelmingly on foreign uranium, while its exposure to Russia has been especially important in enrichment services rather than mined uranium itself.

By 2026, the ISR comeback was accelerating.

Across the country, long-idled uranium assets have been moving back toward production, new ISR projects have been advancing, and domestic supply has become a national priority again.

But the story most relevant to Strathmore runs through one state.

Wyoming has long been the heart of U.S. uranium, with more than 250 million pounds produced over seven decades. And within Wyoming, one district makes this moment feel almost circular.

The Shirley Basin.

This is not just another roll-front district.

It is widely recognized as the birthplace of commercial in-situ recovery in the United States, where the first commercial ISR operation proved out the concept in the 1960s.

The district produced roughly 51 million to 53 million pounds of U3O8 before shutting down in the early 1990s.

Now, after decades as one of the original proving grounds for American ISR, Shirley Basin is back in the uranium conversation.

That matters because this is the same district where Strathmore Plus Uranium is advancing its flagship Agate project.

The company is not claiming to be a producer today, and Agate is still exploration-stage. But the setting matters.

This is not frontier geology in an unknown basin. It is historically drilled ground in one of the most important ISR districts in the United States.

The national uranium comeback has a Wyoming chapter and Strathmore is trying to write its part of that chapter in the place where American ISR first proved itself.

⚛️ Strathmore Plus Uranium

Let’s talk about Strathmore Plus Uranium Corp (CSE: SUU) (OTCQB: SUUFF).

Strathmore is still early. The company is exploration-stage, working toward its first formal resource estimate.

But the story here is not just what Strathmore has today. It is who is behind the company, where they are working, and what they have already done in uranium before.

Strathmore is led by Dev Randhawa, a name uranium investors know well.

He founded the original Strathmore Minerals and later Fission Uranium, whose Triple R discovery became one of the great Athabasca Basin success stories. Fission was acquired by Paladin Energy in 2024 in a deal valued at roughly C$1.14 billion.

Around him is a technical team with direct Wyoming uranium experience.

Vice president of exploration Terrence Osier was lead geologist for the original Strathmore Minerals’ Wyoming operation.

John DeJoia has spent nearly 50 years in the uranium industry and, according to Strathmore’s investor materials, was directly responsible for mining 22 million pounds of uranium in Wyoming.

Director Marion Loomis adds another layer of uranium discovery experience.

This is not just a team looking at Wyoming uranium from a distance. It is a team with direct exploration, development, and operating experience in the same basins Strathmore is working today.

A strategy built on what others left behind

That experience shapes how the company operates.

Rather than chase entirely greenfield ground and drill on hope, Strathmore targets overlooked, previously explored projects.

Ground that earlier operators drilled, mapped, or walked away from before the modern uranium market changed the context.

Across Wyoming, Strathmore holds more than 9,000 acres of strategic uranium properties in the Shirley Basin and Gas Hills districts, with three permitted projects: Agate, Beaver Rim, and Night Owl.

Agate is the center of the story today.

The project now consists of 124 wholly owned lode mining claims covering roughly 2,560 acres in the Shirley Basin.

Kerr-McGee historically drilled up to 650 holes across the greater project area in the 1970s, and Strathmore is now using that old work to guide modern drilling.

By May 2026, the company had completed 294 holes at Agate during its 2023 to 2026 drilling programs, including five monitor wells for groundwater studies and core recovery for chemical assays and XRF analysis at the University of Wyoming.

Strathmore reported uranium mineralization in more than 85% of that drilling.

There is an important technical caveat. As with many early-stage sandstone uranium programs, a number of reported intersections are based on downhole radiometric equivalent uranium readings, often reported as eU3O8.

Those readings can differ from chemical assays where disequilibrium is present. Strathmore has been collecting core, conducting follow-up analytical work, and advancing groundwater studies as it evaluates the project.

What is happening at Agate

Agate’s appeal is geological fit.

The uranium sits in classic Wyoming-type roll fronts in the Wind River Formation sandstone.

According to Strathmore’s May 2026 update, the mineralization is shallow, from roughly 20 to 150 feet deep, and much of it appears below the water table.

That is the kind of setting that can be relevant for ISR. But it is still only the starting point. ISR amenability has to be evaluated through groundwater studies, leach testing, engineering, permitting, and economic work.

Strathmore’s work also includes a research connection with the University of Wyoming.

A US$200,000 University of Wyoming funded research program is being used to help identify drilling targets and better image roll-front systems at Agate and Beaver Rim.

This spring’s drilling delineated a new mineralized trend in the Middle Sand, the horizon that produced much of Shirley Basin’s historic output, over more than 2,500 feet. It also extended a known Lower Sand trend another 1,000 feet to the west.

Beaver Rim gives Strathmore exposure to the historic Gas Hills district, where the company has reported early mineralized intercepts from stacked roll-front targets.

Night Owl, meanwhile, is a small past-producing surface mine in the Shirley Basin region.

None of this makes Strathmore a finished story.

⚛️ Wrapping Up

Strathmore is still early, and that is part of what makes the story interesting.

The company does not yet have a mineral resource or reserve estimate, and Agate still has to move through the normal technical, permitting, financing, and economic steps before anyone can call it a mine.

But unlike many early-stage explorers, Strathmore is not starting with a blank map.

It is working shallow, historically drilled roll-front uranium in the birthplace of American ISR, with modern drilling, groundwater studies, and a team that has spent decades in these same Wyoming uranium districts.

That is what makes Strathmore unusual.

Its people helped build earlier chapters of the Wyoming uranium story, and now they are back on familiar ground at the same moment the rest of the industry is rediscovering it.

Across Wyoming, the wells are coming back on.

And in Shirley Basin, where American ISR first proved itself, Strathmore Plus is making the case that there may be more of the story left to tell.

For more on Strathmore Plus Uranium Corp. and its Wyoming projects, visit strathmoreplus.com or contact the team at [email protected].

Disclosure: Nuclear Update (“NU”) is an independent publication focused on uranium, energy, and related markets. Data and information in this article are provided from third-party sources, and NU is not responsible for their accuracy or completeness. Readers should always perform their own research and due diligence on any company or investment discussed. NU does not provide personalized investment advice and is not an investment advisor; any companies or profiles mentioned may not be suitable for all investors. NU received compensation from Strathmore Plus Uranium Corp for the preparation and dissemination of this sponsored edition.

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