BHP Billiton plans to supplement underground mining at Olympic Dam with a massive open-cut mine. Export of uranium is expected to increase from an average of 4,000 tonnes per year to 19,000 tonnes per year and the production of copper, gold and silver is also expected to increase.

Olympic Dam mine, South Australia

The company has not been required to study the viability of mining copper, gold and silver without also extracting and selling uranium − an option (PDF) which would allow for ongoing, profitable mining while addressing at least some of the major problems.

The mine operates under the Roxby Downs Indenture Act, which provides overrides and exemptions from the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988. BHP Billiton is in a legal position to determine what consultation occurs with Traditional Owners, who is consulted, and nature of any consultation. The company decides the level of protection that Aboriginal heritage sites receive and which sites are recognised. It is ironic and hypocritical that BHP Billiton supports Reconciliation Australia’s ‘good governance’ program and has provided over $2 million to Reconciliation Australia, yet will not relinquish its exemptions from the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988.

Kokatha Traditional Owners c.2004

The Indenture Act also allows wide-ranging and indefensible exemptions from key environmental laws such as the SA Environmental Protection Act 1993, Freedom of Information Act 1991, and Natural Resources Act 2004.

Uranium production at Olympic Dam is expected to increase to 19,000 tonnes per year, sufficient to fuel 95 power reactors which will produce 2,850 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste per year (in the form of spent nuclear fuel). That amount of spent fuel contains 28.5 tonnes of plutonium − enough for 2,850 nuclear weapons each year. Over the lifespan of the mine, it could be responsible for the production of enough plutonium for over 340,000 nuclear weapons.

BHP Billiton sells uranium to nuclear weapons states, states refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, states blocking progress on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, states with a history of secret nuclear weapons research, and states stockpiling ‘civil’ plutonium.

A new low was set in 2006 when the federal government, with BHP Billiton’s support, negotiated a uranium export agreement with the secretive, repressive, militaristic, undemocratic regime in China. The expansion of the Olympic Dam mine is heavily predicated on the export of copper-uranium concentrate to China.

Under the mine expansion plan, the production of radioactive tailings, stored above ground, will increase seven-fold to 68 million tonnes annually. The tailings contain a toxic, acidic soup of radionuclides and heavy metals. There have been numerous spills and leaks – e.g. in the mid-1990s it was revealed that about three billion litres had seeped from the tailings dams over two years.

Radioactive tailings, Olympic Dam. Photo by Jessie Boylan

BHP Billiton proposes an increase in water consumption from 35 million litres daily (from the Great Artesian Basin) to over 250 million litres daily (up to 42 million litres from the Great Artesian Basin, the remainder from a proposed desalination plant at Point Lowly, near Whyalla). That’s over 100,000 litres every minute – in the driest state in the driest continent.

The water take from the Great Artesian Basin has had adverse impacts on the precious Mound Springs and the desalination plant is also controversial.

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