Technical Report for the Fort Knox Mine - Kinross Gold

Fort Knox Mine Technical Report13.0 SAMPLE PREPARATION, ANALYSES AND SECURITYCore and reverse circulation drill samples, which are the basis for all analyticaldeterminations, are collected from the drill hole under the direct supervision of Companystaff. The samples are labeled and placed in bags at the Company facility and preparedfor transport to commercial laboratories for preparation and assay. Employees of thelaboratory pick up drill samples at the Company facility. The RC cuttings are weighed,dried and reweighed. The sample is then crushed to minus 25.4 millimeters (1 inch) anda 1250-gram split is retained for air shipment to the analytical facility for assay. Once the1250-gram split has been delivered to the laboratory it is pulverized to 80-mesh andpassed through a riffle splitter to produce a 200 to 300 gram sample. This sample is thenring pulverized to minus 150-mesh, rolled, and a 50 gram sample is taken for golddetermination by fire assay with an atomic absorption “finish”. For the majority of thedrilling at Fort Knox, any assay exceeding 10.29 g/t Au would be re-assayed by fireassay with a gravimetric finish. The detection limit of these analytical methods is 0.001oz Au/short ton from 1987 to 2002. The detection limit is 0.0003 oz Au/short ton from2002 to present.13.1 Quality Control, Quality AssuranceThe objective of FGMI’s QA/QC Program is to ensure the accuracy and integrity of thedata. FGMI submits samples to check assays as part of the company’s standard QualityControl, Quality Assurance Program (QA/QC). The QA/QC Program includes thesubmission of duplicates, blanks and standards at rates described in the followingsection.13.2 Check AssaysFrom 1991 to 2005, to monitor the precision of the analytical process, FGMI hadcollected separate 1250-gram samples from every tenth sample collected. The evennumbered samples, 20th, 40th, and 60th, were air freighted along with the regularsamples to the primary lab. Every odd-numbered 10th, 30th, and 50th, sample was40