Adelaide, Australia/ One of the world's biggest uranium mines returned to full operation in recent weeks after lengthy repairs. An scape occured in October 2009, drove the mining company BHP Billiton to close the mine that in 2008 produced more then 4000 tonnes of Uranium.

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.

Start up

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 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.

Olympic Dam

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.

The mine, that used to give like 10% of the world´s total amount of radioactive materials, is intended to reach his capacity as soon as possible in order to reach his old numbers and a moment that left a big minus in the mining sector.

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. 

World Nuclear News*