StockInterview:
Many consider Africa as a somewhat dangerous place to live and work. How would you describe Namibia from your perspective?

Rick Bonner:
This is not Africa. This is a much better place than what you see on CNN. It’s a country that has great exploration potential, has a fairly stable political regime, and has first-world health care. There are high quality roads in this country. You can actually get around. The phones work. It has all of these first-world attributes in an area that is perceived to be third world. Celebrities are attracted by the unspoiled look of the desert, and have found a little bit of a gold mine with all the attributes of beautiful restaurants, clean and beautiful beaches and friendly people. You can walk the streets in the evenings and feel safe. Hopefully, the country will use this commodity boom to lift it in its social status globally. I encourage you to come and see the country for itself.


StockInterview:
Since we first began researching uranium in Namibia, there’s much more interest now. Why are several turning to Namibia for development?

Rick Bonner:
The country is very much pro-mining. They have a need to create jobs and to create wealth here. I don’t see there being any political or environmental obstacles. Thirty-plus years of mining by Rossing has been very good for this country. I think Paladin will tell you they’ve not seen any significant obstacles for their development. To date, we’ve not had significant obstacles in the environmental, political or geological arena to say we’re not going to be able to develop this.


StockInterview:
Does working 30 kilometers away from the Rossing uranium mine help or impede your efforts to move the Valencia project forward?

Rick Bonner:
Clearly, the proven model for our mine is Rossing, one of the world’s largest uranium deposits. I have a very good working relationship with the people at Rossing. We’re cooperating on many non-commercial fronts right now. We hope to conclude some commercial arrangements. Things like shipping of yellowcake, which is extremely regulated, might be an area we can cooperate in. One of the areas of cooperation that we are talking about with Rossing is on human capital. Looking at areas where we can assist individuals in becoming external consultants, and working together instead of becoming competitors.


StockInterview:
Please describe the Valencia project.

Rick Bonner:
The main zone has a surface exposure of about approximately of about 400 by 400 meters. The deposit is outcropping or it’s at surface. It’s about 400 meters by 400 meters of outcrops. It has a plunge to the southwest of about thirty degrees. The East Zone is about 700 or 800 meters long. It comprises of at least two zones of material, each one is about 10 to 20 meters wide. It is separated by a marble unit in between. The body is located in a fold axis and has a nice little plunge to it. I can spot a hole and tell you we’re going to drill in 80 to 85 meters and we’re going to intersect the granite. And we do. It is predictable. I think a great deal of credit goes to Goldfields who did a lot of drilling. The archived data is of sufficient quality that we can use their geological data, their historical drill logs. I have quite strong confidence in what they did. Our work is basically to prove or to verify that their work was of quality. And it’s holding up.


StockInterview:
What did you do to confirm the Goldfields drilling?

Rick Bonner:
The Valencia project is quite advanced stage. The deposit was explored 30 years ago by Goldfields. They drilled approximately 22,000 meters of diamond drilling, and the bulk of it was in the Main Zone. My program was to verify their holes by twinning a number of them, so I could gain a comfort factor on their historical assays. Goldfields drilled the deposit on a 70 x 70 meter grid. I used a number of my holes to fill-in that in certain areas 35 x 35 meters. Then, we did infill drilling and exploratory drilling to see in the East Zone.


StockInterview:
How does the East Zone fit into the overall Valencia Project?

Rick Bonner:
The East Zone does continue. My results to date are sufficiently encouraging for me to go back and start to pull out some of the old drill core from Gold Fields to re-sample and relog that. And to take a look at how we can explore to maybe add blocks into the mine reserve for the Main Zone.


StockInterview:
How long have you been drilling this property?

Rick Bonner:
We acquired the property in December 2005. But, I actually started drilling on the property in September 2005. I finished in November 2006 with a total of 8000 meters of diamond drilling. This program was designed to verify, to infill and to explore holes that were for the most part in the Main Zone. The RC program included 148 drill vertical holes. The program was designed to outline about 7-plus million tons of graded material for mining.


StockInterview:
Your deposit is uranium-mineralized granite. Aren’t you going through a lot of drill bits?

Rick Bonner:
The granite is hard, that’s for sure. But the schist rocks in the marble are very easy. We completed an RC program using about six inches holes, and we were getting penetration rates in the order of 150 meters per day per drill. I had three diamond drills working and that finished in early October. And I had two RC rigs working on the measured block. That program ended three weeks ago.


StockInterview:
What is your next step?

Rick Bonner:
I signed a contract about 2 weeks ago to complete a pre-feasibility study. That will be the basic technical measurement of the Main Zone, for the most part. Work is expected to be completed in late February. It will contain a lot of components in what you would call a feasibility study. The focus on the pre-feasibility study is on the resource itself. We want to constrain the size of the deposit. We want to get an understanding of the mining method and of the geologic and mining block audits, so that we have a technical measurement. We do initial metallurgical work. We do initial mineralogical work. We do initial environmental studies.


StockInterview:
You’ve been at this project for over a year. Is it going in the direction you thought it would?

Rick Bonner:
All of my work to date has not resulted in any surprises. I drill a hole. I get what I expect. I send out the assays. I get what I expect. I look at the size of the size of the deposit, and I drill a hole at the edge of it. And I get exactly what I expect. Geology has a habit of jumping and grabbing you when you least expect it. But, for the most part, we target drill holes and we get what expect. My exploration holes – there’s granite at the surface and it’s radioactive. We drill a hole and we get radioactive granite.


StockInterview:
Having become so familiar with this deposit, do you feel it is satisfactorily delineated or could you discover more uranium on the property?

Rick Bonner:
I believe the deposit is, for the most part, delineated. The East Zone needs to have better infill drilling to add blocks to it. There are tongues of granite sticking out to the west that have had no drilling in it at all, and they are radioactive. The focus right now is on getting a pit design so we can understand what we have so we can begin to look at the mining scenario. As we wrap up that work, and move into the feasibility stage in the second quarter of next year, that will give me the opportunity to start stepping out and exploring the license, and looking in areas where I believe I can more blocks.


StockInterview:
Because the project is in the desert, what steps have you taken to ensure you have plenty of water and power with which to mine?

Rick Bonner:
In terms of discussions with water, which is a big concern, we have in writing a note from NamWater that they can supply us with water. We are also looking at other areas where we can make sure we have a sufficient supply of water for our business. We’ve talked to NamPower about power demands and about building infrastructure for the mine.


StockInterview:
And what are you doing about the infrastructure and other important launch steps to move the project forward?

Rick Bonner:
We’ve looked at very basic concepts of pipeline access and that sort of thing, for delivering consumables such as water and acid, perhaps even fuel. We have material at laboratories now undergoing consumptive tests on acid, extractive work. We are looking into the mineralogy to determine optimum processing. In the near-term, I’m starting to construct large camp to facilitate engineers and that sort of thing for the feasibility study. That should be commissioned at the end of February to coincide with the pre-feasibility (ending). When we roll into a feasibility study, we will be much more focused on what is this actually going to cost us. So, we refine the cost factors, the capital requirements, processing and crushing costs, and that sort of thing.


StockInterview:
Are there enough people in Namibia to mine the growing number of uranium mines expected to come online?

Rick Bonner:
You should be asking about the planet. The commodity downturn for the past twenty years has resulted in a lack of talent at virtually all levels of mining. My understanding is there are two Namibian nationals, who are metallurgists. Out of a population of two million, one million is basically underemployed or unemployed. We will have to recruit. We will have a training component as part of our program. There are schools here that teach disciplines such as geology or surveying. The government is very cooperative when you want to mentor an individual into a position. I see the human aspect here is one we have to manage well, but I think it’s a problem in the mining industry on a planetary scale, not just on this country’s scale.