Abstract
The Sanbaqi uranium deposit in Hunan Province, south China, is the largest of a group of paleokarst-hosted uranium deposits in Lower Carboniferous limestone. Mineralization is localized in cavities and fault-breccias formed by dissolution of carbonates. Four episodes of karst formation are recognized: late Triassic-early Jurassic, late Jurassic-early Cretaceous, Cretaceous-Tertiary and Recent. Field relations indicate that the main uranium mineralization is related to the second karst episode. This is supported by isotopic ages of two pitchblende samples at 129 Ma and 134 Ma, as indicated by their nearly concordant data points on concordia plot. These ages are in the time range of the early Yanshanian tectonic movements that affected southern China, and the faulting related to the movements likely triggered the mineralization process at the Sanbaqi deposit. Associated minerals include pyrite, millerite, ullmannite, niccolite, molybdenite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, galena, calcite and dolomite. Fluid inclusion studies on calcite reveal that temperature of ore deposition was from 181° to 150 °C. The δ18O and δD values of the ore fluids range from 1.5 to 7.9 per mil and from −30.4 and −54.8 per mil, respectively. The mineralogical, fluid inclusion and isotopic data indicate that the minerlization took place in episodic pulses of hydrothermal fluids that were introduced along a set of ring faults. Mobilization and redeposition of earlier formed ore minerals in an open system added to the complexity of the paragenetic sequence. Younger episodes of mineralization occurred during the later karst events as suggested by the geological and additional pitchblende U-Pb isotopic data, during the Cretaceous-Tertiary late Yanshanian tectonic movements and recently. Finally, a comparison of the Sanbaqi uranium deposit with the uranium deposits hosted by solution collapse breccia pipes of the Colorado Plateau, USA, shows that they have many similarities.
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