HPSA’s 4x Grade Uplift: What Tony M Tests Prove and What They Don’t

US conventional uranium deposits grade between 0.1% and 0.3% uranium, which means a miner digs, hauls, and processes an enormous volume of rock to extract a sliver of metal. Everything else is waste that still has to be moved and paid for.

At the Tony M deposit in southeastern Utah, that waste has to travel 127 miles by road to reach the only fully licensed conventional uranium mill in the country. Every ton of low-grade material shipped is, in effect, a direct tax on the economics of the project.

US uranium production tripled in 2025 to 2.1 million pounds U3O8, the highest since 2017. Yet that figure barely dents domestic demand of roughly 50 million pounds a year, and the 2025 weighted-average purchase price sat at $58.46 per pound. The supply gap is real, but the cost structure of conventional mining has historically kept US producers on the margin.

High-Pressure Slurry Ablation, or HPSA, is now being positioned as the lever that could change that arithmetic at Tony M. What follows here separates what the 2026 test results have actually proven from what remains unproven, what the year-end preliminary economic assessment must answer, and the specific conditions to watch before any 2027 restart decision.

Why US conventional uranium mining has always struggled with the numbers

The problem starts with grade, and grade is unforgiving. When uranium makes up a fraction of 1% of the rock, the cost of moving and processing that rock does not scale down to match. Haulage, milling, and tailings management all accumulate per ton, regardless of how little uranium each ton actually contains.

That is the core structural disadvantage of US conventional mining relative to in-situ recovery (ISR) operations and higher-grade international producers. ISR extracts uranium by dissolving it underground, avoiding excavation and milling entirely. Conventional mines carry the full weight of shafts, haulage, and processing on every tonne.

The processing bottleneck compounds it. The White Mesa Mill is the sole fully licensed conventional uranium mill operating in the United States, with a licensed capacity of roughly 8 million pounds U3O8 per year. Set that against domestic production requirements of around 50 million pounds annually and the constraint becomes obvious.

White Mesa Mill capacity and operations are documented directly by Energy Fuels, the facility’s owner, confirming it is the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States with a licensed throughput of more than 8 million pounds U3O8 per year, a ceiling that defines the processing constraint for every conventional project in the country.

For any conventional project without its own mill, that single-mill reality creates two exposures: toll-milling fees paid to process ore, and scheduling risk if White Mesa faces any technical, regulatory, or community disruption. There is almost no redundancy in the system.

The following table sets out the structural arithmetic that any cost-reduction technology has to work against.

The gap between 2.1 million pounds of production and 50 million pounds of demand tells you the shortfall was not solved by the 2025 surge. It is structural, and that is the context in which any new technology has to be judged.

The 2025 production surge to 2.1 million pounds reflects a sector responding to price signals, but US uranium market dynamics in 2026 point to structural supply constraints that no single project restart resolves, with the weighted-average purchase price and contract activity both shaping the commercial calculus for conventional producers.

How Tony M inherits the sector’s structural disadvantages

Tony M carries every one of these disadvantages in concentrated form. Its ore grades around 3,500 parts per million, or 0.35%, at the better intervals, and even that sits at the upper end of the conventional range.

At that grade, the overwhelming majority of what gets mined and hauled is waste rock. Every one of those 127 miles to White Mesa is paid for on tonnage that will never yield recoverable uranium.

Understanding this arithmetic is the foundation for judging whether HPSA’s reported numbers are material or marginal. Skip it, and there is no way to assess what the technology is actually worth.

What HPSA actually does and why carnotite ore is the right test case

The logic of pre-concentration is simple: do the separation work at the mine, so only the valuable fraction pays for the trip to the mill. HPSA is DISA Technologies’ method for doing that, and the mechanism explains why it works on Tony M ore specifically.

Pressurised slurry jets propel particles against one another at high velocity, breaking the ore apart along the boundaries where different minerals meet and where hardness contrasts create natural fracture points. In carnotite-type ores, the type found at Tony M and across southeastern Utah, the resulting fracture concentrates roughly 90% of both uranium and vanadium into a fine fraction, which can then be screened away from the coarser quartz gangue that is discarded.

This is where the mine-site logic pays off. HPSA is compact enough to be truck-mounted and deployed at the extraction site, and it needs neither grinding media nor chemical reagents.

• No grinding media required
• No chemical reagents required
• Truck-mounted, deployable at the mine site
• Relocates separation from the mill to the point of extraction

The practical effect is that only the upgraded fraction travels the 127 miles to White Mesa. The waste that would otherwise be hauled and toll-milled is left behind.

IsoEnergy also tested ore sorting on Tony M material, an alternative pre-concentration method that uses a scintillometer to divert rock by radioactivity level. It did not match HPSA’s grade improvement on this ore. That makes HPSA the stronger method here specifically, not a blanket claim about pre-concentration in general.

IsoEnergy projects HPSA can lift mill feedstock grades by 3x to 5x and cut haulage costs substantially.

Company projection, not confirmed result IsoEnergy states HPSA is expected to reduce haulage costs by more than 70%. This is a corporate projection, not a verified commercial outcome.

The carnotite mineralogy is not incidental. It is precisely the ore characteristic that makes the fracture mechanism effective at Tony M, which means you should not assume the same results carry over automatically to other uranium deposit types. The mechanism and the ore are matched, and that specificity is both the strength of the technology here and the limit on how widely the results extrapolate.

What the 2026 test results actually prove, and where the evidence stops

The 2026 Tony M leach study produced numbers strong enough to explain the attention. The question is what each one establishes, and what it quietly leaves open.

The headline result was a 4.0x grade uplift, lifting feed from 3,500 ppm to 14,087 ppm. Only 22% of the original ore mass reported to the concentrate, meaning 78% was rejected as waste before it ever left the site. Uranium recovery came in at 88%, and the leach step after HPSA treatment ran in 2 hours against more than 20 hours under conventional processing.

4.0x grade uplift 3,500 ppm to 14,087 ppm on Tony M ore, per IsoEnergy / DISA 2026 test results.

The side-by-side comparison shows what changes at the mill feed level.

These are genuinely strong figures for mill feed quality. The pilot results do not, however, confirm viable unit economics at commercial throughput, demonstrate consistent performance across variable ore grades, or reveal how the process responds as mineralisation quality changes with depth.

The 88% recovery figure is the one to scrutinise hardest. Any loss at the pre-concentration stage compounds through the rest of the value chain, and the gap between 88% and 100% is uranium abandoned before it ever reaches the mill.

The scale-up history in other commodities adds a note of caution. Sensor-based sorting, dense-media separation, and gravity pre-concentration have been commercialised in gold, tungsten, and lead-zinc mining over two decades, and the pattern is consistent: multi-year adoption timelines, pilot metrics that can over-perform relative to full-scale plants, and fixed mill costs that may cap the savings even when the technology works as tested. All of the Tony M results remain from pilot and preliminary testing, and no independent analyst notes evaluating HPSA economics at the project are available in public sources.

The read for you is straightforward. The 2026 results are the strongest evidence yet that HPSA works on Tony M ore, but they are not the commercial proof that project financing and a mine restart require.

The questions the year-end PEA must answer

The preliminary economic assessment targeted for year-end 2026 has to close that gap. To support a 2027 restart decision, it needs to demonstrate full-scale throughput performance rather than batch results, quantify the integration cost with White Mesa, and confirm viable unit economics at the concentrate grade the process actually delivers.

Permitting is the other open question. Many Utah conventional sites are previously mined, which carries legacy environmental obligations and baseline work that can stretch timelines.

The uranium project development pathway from preliminary economic assessment through permitting to production financing involves overlapping technical and regulatory gates, and the sequence in which those gates close determines whether a conditional restart decision translates into actual production.

EPA uranium mining environmental standards, established under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act alongside the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, set the federal compliance baseline that any previously mined Utah site must satisfy before a restart permit can advance, adding a layer of regulatory sequencing that sits outside the company’s direct control.

And whatever HPSA achieves at the mine site, the White Mesa dependency remains. Any technical, regulatory, or community issue at the sole operating mill is a systemic exposure for Tony M no matter how well the technology performs.

The DISA Uranium Corporation platform and what it means for the technology’s commercial future

The story is no longer about one deposit. On 4 August 2026, DISA Technologies announced the launch of DISA Uranium Corporation, bundling multiple past-producing Utah conventional mines under a single platform.

IsoEnergy’s stake in DISA Uranium and the structure of the portfolio contribution deal reveal how the economics of shared HPSA infrastructure are intended to be divided, with the 33% equity position aligning IsoEnergy’s upside to platform-wide performance rather than Tony M alone.

The deposits in the platform:

• Tony M, past-producing, southeastern Utah carnotite-type ore
• Daneros, past-producing southeastern Utah conventional
• Rim, past-producing southeastern Utah conventional
• Sage Plain, past-producing southeastern Utah conventional
• Flatiron, past-producing southeastern Utah conventional

The platform holds exclusive rights to HPSA for uranium, vanadium, and abandoned uranium mine remediation. The strategic logic is that shared HPSA infrastructure across several deposits spreads the fixed cost of the technology, while vanadium recovery and remediation contracts create additional revenue optionality.

It also changes where the risk sits. The platform’s success no longer rests on Tony M alone, which cuts both ways.

Running HPSA across deposits with varying ore types and grades introduces performance variability that a single-project test cannot capture. And the 4 August 2026 announcement is the most recent public disclosure, with no updates identified after September 2026 in available sources.

The multi-deposit structure tells you that DISA and IsoEnergy are betting on HPSA as a repeatable industrial process, not a one-off fix. That raises the stakes on scale-up performance, because underperformance on any single deposit could dent the credibility of the whole platform.

For anyone tracking domestic uranium supply, this structure is the vehicle through which HPSA’s commercial viability gets tested across sites. That makes the year-end 2026 PEA and the potential 2027 restart inflection points for the broader platform thesis, not just for one mine. Before that restart decision, three conditions are worth tracking:

1. PEA outcomes, specifically unit economics at HPSA-upgraded feed grades
2. White Mesa throughput availability and toll-milling terms
3. Permitting status for previously mined Utah sites

What changes if HPSA delivers, and what the path there actually requires

The upside case is specific and worth stating plainly. If HPSA delivers its projected 3x-5x feedstock grade improvement and more than 70% haulage cost reduction at commercial scale, the unit economics of southeastern Utah conventional mining shift materially.

That could bring Tony M and similar deposits into productive range at current prices, without needing a sustained uranium price spike to justify the capital. At a $58.46 per pound market, that is the difference between a stranded deposit and a viable mine.

Company projection, not confirmed result IsoEnergy’s September 2026 corporate presentation projects HPSA can reduce haulage costs by more than 70%. This is a projection, not a verified commercial outcome.

For that outcome to hold, five conditions have to line up at once:

1. HPSA scale-up performs consistently with test results across variable ore conditions
2. The year-end PEA confirms viable unit economics at 88% recovery and 22% mass retention
3. White Mesa mill access stays available on commercially viable terms
4. Permitting for previously mined Utah sites proceeds without material delay
5. Uranium prices hold at or above the 2025 level of $58.46 per pound

There is a competing structural reality that sits alongside the upside. ISR operations and international producers will remain lower-cost in most scenarios, which means HPSA-enabled US conventional mines are likely to function as higher-cost swing producers rather than baseload supply.

That distinction matters for contract terms and volume. Swing producers tend to sell into strength and idle in weakness, and you should factor that pattern into any assessment of the platform’s earning power.

For investors seeking broader context on why domestic conventional production matters beyond any single project, our full explainer on uranium supply chain vulnerabilities covers the geopolitical concentration risks, contracting trends, and policy levers that make US-sourced pounds commercially distinct from international supply.

Both the upside scenario and the risk scenario turn on the same variable: whether HPSA performs at scale the way it performed in the 2026 leach study. That makes the pilot scale-up phase between now and the year-end PEA the single most important stretch in the entire thesis.

You do not need a forecast of whether HPSA succeeds. You need the conditions under which it would, and the order in which they get confirmed.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors. Forward-looking statements are speculative and subject to change based on market developments and company performance.

Watching the right variables before the PEA lands

The year-end 2026 PEA is the document that decides whether the HPSA thesis moves from technically promising to commercially investable. A credible one has to contain three things:

1. Unit operating costs per pound at the HPSA-upgraded feed grade
2. Sensitivity analysis to both uranium price and recovery rate assumptions
3. Capital cost estimates for an HPSA unit at commercial throughput

The potential 2027 restart is a conditional inflection point, not a scheduled event. It only carries weight if the PEA confirms the economics, if White Mesa access is secured on terms consistent with the PEA’s assumptions, and if permitting timelines for previously mined Utah sites hold.

It is worth holding the wider frame in view. The US produced 2.1 million pounds in 2025 against demand of roughly 50 million pounds, and any technology that materially improves conventional mining economics matters for energy security conversations that reach well beyond a single Utah deposit.

That gap is what reframes the HPSA story. It is not only a company’s technology bet; it is a question with national supply implications, and that is the lens commercially-minded readers should use to weigh the stakes.

For now, the watching brief is clear. Track what the PEA actually contains, watch whether the restart conditions hold in sequence, and note that no public disclosures from IsoEnergy or DISA have appeared after September 2026. The difference between following this story and understanding it lies in knowing exactly which variables to check, and in what order.