Australia's largest reserve of uranium ore is at Olympic Dam. It was discovered in 1975 as the result of a drilling program conducted by Western Mining Corporation Limited. The mine is currently operated by BHP Billiton.
The ore deposit is located on Roxby Downs Station, about 25 kilometres west of the opal mining town of Andamooka (265 km north of Port Augusta).
There are large volumes of mineralised rock in the ore body but at present only about 450 million tonnes of ore has been proven. This contains about 11 million tonnes of copper, 360 000 tonnes of uranium oxide, 2700 tonnes of silver, and 270 tonnes of gold. The top of the deposit is about 350 metres below ground level, so underground mining is necessary. The deposit itself is about 7 kilometres long and 4 kilometres wide. It is the largest copper ore body in Australia and one of the world's largest uranium deposits. The mine itself is the biggest long term development project in South Australia and more than one billion dollars was spent on establishing it: this includes the construction of the nearby town of Roxby Downs which is home to about 3500 people.
Mining started in June 1988. By March 1996 more than 8500 tonnes of uranium oxide had been produced along with 370 000 tonnes of copper, 66 tonnes of silver, and 5 tonnes of gold. In 1999-2000 Olympic Dam produced 4089 tonnes of uranium oxide achieving $895 million in export revenue. Just over half the uranium (55%) has been sold to power utilities in Europe, about a quarter to Japan, and the remainder to Korea (11%) and the United States (8%). Olympic Dam has an expected life of 200 years.
Recent resources update (Sept 2007) is now reaching 7738 million tonnes of ore @ 0.87%Cu, 0.29kg/t U3O8, 0.3g/t Au and 1.6g/t Ag. As a comparison, only one year ago, resources were estimated to "only" 4430 remaining tonnes of ore. (Ref: The Advertiser, 27/09/2007, p2&4, Adelaide)
Refs.:
Mining Annual Review (1985): 369.
Lottermoser, B. G. (1995): Rare earth element mineralogy of the Olympic Dam Cu-U-Au-Ag deposit, Roxby Downs, South Australia; implications for ore genesis. Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Monatshefte 1995, 371-384.
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