South Australia to be Site of World’s Largest Uranium Mine

On 18 October 2011 the Premier of South Australia Mike Rann announced in Parliament:

“Legislation will be introduced into both houses of parliament today to ratify the amended Olympic Dam indenture to enable the multibillion-dollar Olympic Dam expansion project to proceed. The amended indenture was agreed to and signed last Wednesday by Marius Kloppers, Chief Executive of BHP Billiton, and me on behalf of the government of South Australia. It is the product of years of hard-fought negotiations between the company and the government, particularly the minister assisting in the Olympic Dam negotiations.

The signing of the indenture is a significant milestone in the life of this project, which is a game changer for the South Australian economy.” Source: SA Hansard.

This announcement proceeded the introduction of the Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) (Amendment of Indenture) Amendment Bill 2011 in the SA House of Assembly

The project has been the subject of wide discussion not all of which has been favourable. Criticism has come from the Greens for example, who say “... the decision to give the go-ahead for the world's largest copper and uranium mine will result in enormous harm to public health.” Source: ABC News

Some statistics relevant to the size of the project are -

• The quantity of ore to be processed would increase from 12 million tonnes annually to 72 million tonnes.

• The existing smelter would be expanded and new concentrator and hydrometallurgical plants would be built to process the additional ore, and generate additional concentrate for transport.

• It would take about five years of mining to remove the layer of overburden and expose the first section of the ore body. During this time, about 410 million tonnes per annum of material would be removed from the open pit. Over 40 years, the footprint of the pit would grow to be 14.4 sq kms. The overburden would be used for a 'Rock Storage Facility'.

• On-site production of refined copper would increase to 350,000 tonnes annually (about twice the current output).

• About 1.6 million tonnes of concentrate would be exported to China annually for further processing, yielding about 400,000 tonnes of refined copper along with several thousand tonnes of uranium and some gold and silver. 

According to the SA Premier: "Olympic Dam is the world's largest uranium deposit and the fourth largest gold resource on the planet." No doubt such a lerge and ongoing project will see even more intense debates about the environment and how the project will effect both the surrounding land and wider Australian environment.

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