Olympic Dam back on track

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

One of the world's biggest uranium mines returned to full operation in recent weeks after lengthy repairs. 

 

An ore haulage system in the Clark shaft of the Olympic Dam mine was put out of action by a major incident in October 2009 which saw a loaded ore skip rapidly descended the shaft and send a linked skip flying up into the winding equipment.

 

Without giving details, today's quarterly report from mining giant BHP Billiton noted that the shaft returned to full capacity during the quarter ending 30 June. In that period the mine produced 712 tonnes of uranium oxide, compared to usual production of over 1100 tonnes per quarter. During the quarters covering the incident and the repairs, only 348 tonnes and 89 tonnes were produced.

 

Olympic Dam (Image: BHP Billiton)

 

Olympic Dam is the world's largest known uranium orebody, the fourth largest remaining copper deposit, the fifth largest gold deposit and it also comes with significant quantities of silver. It produces uranium as a co-product with copper.
 
The mine is capable of producing 4000 tonnes of uranium per year, placing it fourth place in the world's top ten uranium mines and accounting for about 8% of total world uranium production. However, BHP Billiton is looking to massively increase the size of the mine over coming decades, and produced a 4000-page draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on its proposed expansion plans in 2009. Decisions on the draft EIS are expected soon from the Australian government. The proposed expansion would take 11 years to implement, and would see production of up to 19,000 tonnes uranium oxide per year.

 

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News