395 Minatome SA Formerly 50% owned by Pechiney (PUK), in December 1982 CFP/Total took over complete control of Minatome (1), thus making CFP/Total France's second largest uranium producer after Cogema (2).
In the mid 'eighties, and unlike almost every other major oil company in the world, Minatome's parent group reaffirmed its confidence in nuclear power and recommitted itself to uranium fuel. It planned to double its (western) world market share in yellowcake from 3% to 6% and increase exports from 10 to 50% of production (3).
Until the reorganisation of CFP/Total's uranium and other mining interests in 1983, Minatome was "unique in that rather than being limited to a specific project, as is typical of joint ventures, it is an on-going partnership in uranium development, involving petroleum and minerals interests" (4). It also acted as an agent for a specialised uranium-buying organisation, as well as for an (unknown) mining company not involved in uranium production, while it held "mining concessions on its own and on behalf of other companies and is a minerals service company providing technical expertise under contract for governments" (4).
By the early 1980s, Minatome was operating in 14 countries over four continents. Its main investments were in SCUMRA, Comuf, Somair, and Rossing, with exploration expenditures chiefly directed at Colombia, the USA, Australia and France (5). In Eire, its subsidiary, Maugh spent four years exploring for uranium at Carlow, near Dublin, before local activists caught on. Nine of them occupied the EEC building in Dublin in November 1979 to protest against the Euratom treaty - one of whose provisions is that member countries should make available uranium to the others. Maugh was singled out by the campaigners for special mention. The Eire government offered the nine a deal: if they pleaded guilty to a charge of "forcible occupation" another charge of"malicious damage" would be dropped. As a result, the protesters were sentenced to one year in gaol, suspended for two years (6).
Within the next two years, Minatome was also exploring in its own name for uranium around the St Austell and Bodmin granites in Cornwall, England: car-borne scintillometer surveys and soil geochemistry were used prior to drilling but "it seems no significant deposits have been found" (7). Cost of this prospecting - and similar investigations in Scotland - was put at US$370,000.
By then, Minatome had also signed a US$6 million agreement with the government of Saudi Arabia, to search for radioactive minerals (8), thus becoming part of a large-scale uranium exploration programme, in which the regime is associated with the USA and the IAEA (9). It has also been prospecting in the Nuba mountains of Sudan (10).
Though reported to have been awarded a contract to explore for uranium in the Hoggar mountains of Algeria in 1977, along with other French and Algerian companies, this appears not to have materialised (see Sogerem).
However, an Association contract was signed with the Colombian state agency IAN in 1976, to explore the central part of the country. On the first day, local people took pot shots at the foreigners, but they didn't prevent a five-year exploration programme being put into operation (11). The contracts enabled Minatome and ENUSA to range over some 50,000 square kilometres of (often indigenous) territory in the Andean provinces of Cundinamarca, Boyaca, Caldas Tolima, Hiila and Antioquia, as well as the flat provinces of Meta, Guiania and Vaupes (12). The latter two provinces are mainly inhabited by Indians (13).
By this time, Minatome had signed a deal with the state Nigerian Mining Company to prospect for uranium in Nigeria. Minatome bought 40% of the Nigerian Uranium Mining Company (Numco) (14).
All this has been relatively low-profile activity. In contrast, Minatome's participation in the Rossing uranium project, like that of RTZ and UG, has attracted criticism from around the world. Minatome's stake in the Namibian mine was bought under the name of Total Campagnie Miniere et Nucleaire in 1973, when the French company received a 10% equity in exchange for a long-term contract involving the purchase of a substantial quantity of uranium concentrates during the 1980s (15). Two years later, Total's role was taken over by the newly-established Minatome (16). By the early 1980s, Minatome was reported to be receiving "at least its equity share" of uranium from Rossing "and possibly more" (17).
The company also extended its illegal Namibian activities to uranium exploration elsewhere in the country - along with Omitaramines (18). Residents and farmers in Wisconsin were alerted to the activities of several companies exploring for uranium in several parts of the state in 1980. Minatome was the most active among these - it drilled no fewer than 41 holes in north-eastern Florence County, before much public attention was drawn to the fact (19). Al Gedicks of the Center for Alternative Mining Development Policy called for a state-wide moratorium, until background radiation levels could be checked at drilling sites, and the state legislature undertook to look into the problem (20). While Minatome was protesting that it hadn't discovered any high concentrations of uranium in the area (21), three state local authorities declared moratoria on uranium mining (22); others followed (23).
Minatome attended the state hearings on uranium along with USX, Anaconda, Phillips Uranium, and American Copper and Nickel; Exxon and Kerr-McGee, though holding the most extensive leases, did not attend (24). One report stated that Minatome did at least agree to voluntary monitoring of radon levels on its exploration drills (25). Activity in the region seems to have fallen off very soon after this flurry of activity.
Since 1982, when Minatome's uranium interests were regrouped under the umbrella of TCM (Total Compagnie Miniere - a reversion to the appelation which preceded Minatome), the company has primarily expanded its uranium interests in France through SCUMRA and Dong-Trieu. Although stated to be still looking for an American uranium mine (3), it has taken few open steps to acquiring one. However, despite the current part-moratorium on uranium developments in Australia, it is here that its non-French interests are primarily concentrated: at Ben Lomond in Queensland, and Manyingee in Western Australia.
Minatome Australia Pty Ltd was incorporated in Queensland in 1967 as Pechiney (Australia) Exploration Pty Ltd, adopting its present name nearly ten years later, in 1976 (26).
Four years later it was awarded a uranium mining lease at Ben Lomond, 60km west of the coastal city of Townsville, an area which has long interested geographers and naturalists (27) and which it had begun exploring some years previously. (In fact, evidence of uranium on the site was discovered as long ago as 1881, although it was not until 1975 that the deposit was formally located) (28).
Initial plans were for an open-pit mine, to be followed by an undergound mine with production of about 200 tonnes/year U3O8 from recoverable reserves of 2,000 tonnes. An estimated US$A50 million would be needed to establish the mine and processing plant (29).
The Queensland regime's eagerness to get the mine underway hinged on plans to site a uranium enrichment plant in Townsville - one proposal for which, at an estimated A$1000 million, came from Minatome itself in October 1979 (30).
Two months later, a French CEA delegation to Queensland discussed a possible US$5000 enrichment plant, while claiming that it was more important for such a plant to be near cheap power and water than a uranium mine.
Officially the Minatome lease was granted in early 1980 (31) but, a year previously, the state Minister for Mines, Energy and Police (sic), Ron Camm, announced that the mine would be given a quick go-ahead, in a statement made well in advance of completion of an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) (27). Attempts by the Townsville Regional Conservation Council, the Queensland Conservation Council, and individuals, to intervene in the public process, were rejected as irrelevant by Camm (55) who, in an interview with Denis Reinhardt, claimed: "If I had to listen and take notice of protests against the issue of a mining lease anywhere in Queensland and listen to the people in close proximity of that mining lease, there would be very few mining leases ever issued" (32).
Not only did the state government refuse to consult with the Townsville City Council and local shires (authorities), it also altered the Mining Act, thus allowing its Mines Department to over-rule local authorities, and it doctored procedures for conducting EIS's - by dropping the term "Environmental" from the rules (27). Meanwhile, Minatome itself had been playing underhand games. Its first application for a lease was made as long ago as August 1976, but concealed in a small circulation newspaper, thus escaping the attentions of the very active anti-uranium mining movement in the state. The application got the approval of the Mining Warden at Charters Towers. An authority to prospect was granted in July 1978 and, although the company stated nearly 18 months later that it still hadn't approval for its lease, the Queensland government was protesting it was "too late" for objections to be heard (33).
Between them, the Queensland government and the mining company effectively undercut a growing opposition to the mine. (Local surveys showed a majority of residents opposed to the project (34); and there had already been an anti-uranium march, in spite of the state's draconic ban on all such demonstrations).
From this point on, opposition mounted dramatically. Peter Valentine, a senior lecturer in geography at the Townsville James Cook University, described the government's processing of the lease as "horrific" and said there appeared to have been a deliberate attempt to avoid public debate. The Australian Telecommunications Employees Association (ATEA) in February 1981 imposed communications bans on Minatome. The union's State Secretary, Ian McLean, justified them with the words: "It is much more difficult to stop a mine already operating than to prevent a mine getting underway, and that's what we are trying to do at Ben Lomond" (35). The Movement Against Uranium Mining (MAUM) also announced a "tent village" at Ben Lomond, to be held that summer (36).
The opponents' case depended not only on previous experience in the uranium industry, but Minatome's existing practice at the mine site. These were summarised by the Queensland Campaign Against Nuclear Power (CANP):
"Already radiation levels 160 times the permitted level have been recorded in the mine. "The clay which Minatome plans to use for the earth tailings dam dissolves in water, and will let contaminated water pass through. The nearest suitable clay is hundreds of kilometres away, and half the known deposits of this type of clay in Australia would be required to adequately line the dam."When the river level falls during the dry season, the contamination will be more concentrated where radioactive particles of silt accumulate in the remaining waterholes.
"Already a level of radioactivity two and a half times the legally permitted level has been recorded in a creek which flows into the river. This was from a stockpile of 3500 tonnes. When the mine is in operation, the stockpile will be two and a half million tonnes.
"There is no way of enforcing the responsibility of the mining company after the mine has closed. After the ten-year life of the mine, when profits and uranium will have been sent to France, Minatome will have no further interest in the abandoned mine or the people living in the area affected by it" (37). It was the Townsville Regional Conservation Council (TRCC), backed by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), which spearheaded legal opposition to Minatome's proposals, and this reached a climax in April 1981 when the company applied for an additional lease of 2035 hectares to cover a uranium-molybdenum tailings dam, access road and camp (38).
The TRCC based its case on several issues:
(i) an inadequate (E)IS which failed to evaluate the effects of the tailings dam and its possible collapse, radioactive emissions to the atmosphere, the impact on fauna and flora, capacity to cope with "extreme rainfall events", and which also failed to lay down proper rehabilitation procedures (39);(ii) incidents of radioactive leaching from an ore stockpile, and lack of radiation control on the existing Minatome campsite. Documents produced by the company itself demonstrated the appalling carelessness with which these matters had been regarded. Hermann Schwabe, a West German environmental engineer, stated that methods of waste containment and tailings dam sealing, as proposed at Ben Lomond, had not even been known to survive spans "below fifty years" (39).
Neil Heinze, a local civil engineer, also claimed that radioactive leakage was "certain" to occur from the site, while all artificial methods of containment were inadequate.
Professor Frank Stacey, Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Queensland, predicted that inevitable radioactive leaking would pollute the Burdekin river system, especially as the proposed dam across the river would "ensure that heavy pollutants tend to accumulate in the reservoir and any area in which water from the reservoir is used, instead of being flushed out to sea" (39);
(iii)the escape of chemical pollutants, particularly heavy metals and radionuclides, into the surface and groundwater systems associated with Keelbottom Creek (the tributary from the Burdekin river next to the mine), from the proposed milling and treatment plant;
(iv) non-radioactive contamination by trace metals, such as copper, lead, zinc and cadmium. Ian Campbell of the Caulfield Institute of Technology's Water Studies Centre addressed this particular hazard.
In response, the Mining Warden rejected Minatome's application - an "historic decision" (at least in the Queensland context) (40) based on environmental considerations. He found that there was no proper long-term arrangement for the containment of tailings. He questioned the appropriateness of clay as a liner for the evaporation ponds and tailings dumps. Taking into account natural erosion and the extremely high rainfall which might be expected during the cyclone season, he doubted the company's ability to effectively isolate toxic materials and, in particular, prevent their discharge into Keelbottom Creek and thereby the Burdekin River. Concluded the Warden:
"I am of the opinion that the public interest or right may be prejudicially affected if the Mining Lease is granted at this stage ... I recommend to the Minister that this application be rejected in so far as it relates to the areas to be used for evaporation ponds, the tailings dump and the treatment plant and facilities pertaining thereto" (39).Within six months, the State Mines Minister, Ivan Gibbs, was blatantly seeking to overturn the Warden's decision. After Minatome drubbed together some "new studies", the Minister felt able to declare that Minatome need not re-apply for a lease, and their work would be assessed within the Mines department itself (41): "the best thing to do with uranium is to mine it and get the best price we can for it", said Gibbs. By this time, another scandal was in the news. The national newsmagazine, National Times, revealed that Minatome had destroyed several vital Aboriginal sites "in the past couple of months" - including one possibly some 4000 years old, "considered to be one of the most significant in North Queensland". This site was bulldozed by the company to make way for an experimental evaporation pond. Another Aboriginal quarry site "considered to be unique in Australia" was also under threat by planned high-tension power lines and water pipes, while a sacred pool was threatened by nearby drilling. To cap it all, a confidential document obtained by the National Times revealed that Minatome had been aware of these Aboriginal sites since 1978 and was advised in an archaeological impact statement that they should be protected (42).
Early the next year, Minatome flew out 36 tonnes of uranium ore from Ben Lomond to Noumea in New Caledonia, then on to France for testing (43). The flight was organised to evade union bans at Townsville, as well as adverse publicity (44).
A few months later, the World Bike Ride - antinuclear activists who had set out from Melbourne in March - set up an "Atom-Free" embassy at the mine site itself (45).
Then, in mid-1983, the federal Australian government banned all uranium exports to France, in retaliation for France's continued nuclear testing in the Pacific. In response, the company reportedly filled in the tailings dam and development work came to a halt (46).
At the end of the year, the company finally published the environmental impact statement - a few days after the ALP government announced a ban on all new uranium mines, apart from Roxby Downs (see WMC). Minatome claimed that adverse effects on the environment from the Ben Lomond mine would be very small, and "there will be no significant radiological effects" (47). It also stated that exports of uranium from the mine would "satisfy" Australia's export requirements (big deal!) and that Minatome would form a JV with an Australian company to guarantee 75% local equity in the uranium venture. The project could begin within two years and production start by 1988 (47).
At the beginning of 1984, the company announced that developing Ben Lomond would cost US$100 million, and that- though the mine was not likely to receive federal government approval - the project would still proceed. Later estimates were that the mine would produce about 500 tonnes/year uranium metal and slightly lower tonnages of molybdenum over a period of 10 years, with an average grading of 2kg/tonne (48).
Early in 1986 it was reported in the Australian Senate that the uranium ore stockpiled at Ben Lomond had been virtually abandoned, with a minimum of security precautions (49).
Also in 1986, the Australian Labor Party government shocked many in the country when it reversed its ban on uranium exports to France. But even before then, Minatome - predicting frankly in 1984, for instance, that "such an illogical policy cannot last" (50) - had been actively developing another uranium deposit in Australia. This is the Manyingee project, which Minatome operated in a JV with UG and Aquitaine (Elf Aquitaine Triako Mines Ltd) (51) near Onslow in the Aboriginal Pilbara region of Western Australia. Using a carbonate leach process, testing on the deposit began in the early 1980s (52). By 1986, Stage 1 of the production phase had finished with the production of a small quantity of yellowcake slurry. Stage II drilling further injection and extraction holes was expected to commence soon after. On being asked by an environmental researcher when this was to be, a Total Mining representative replied "none of your business" (53).
According to investigators at Manyingee in 1986, assay workers for Minatome in 1980/81 had been issued with wire brushes and instructed to erase any Aboriginal paintings in the area. The site is the traditional Dreaming of the Talandji people of the Ashburton river, some of whom live in Onslow (56). However, Minatome's exploration with Kratos NL (35%) and the Wyoming Mineral Corp (32.6%) at Pandanus Creek in Australia's Northern Territory appears to have stopped (54).
Further reading:
Little Atom: The Minatome Case, published by Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Queensland, 2/81.
Contact: Comite de Liaison Uranium-Nucleaire de l'Aveyron, 9 rue de l'Embergue, 12000 Rodez, France.
WISE-Glen Aplin, PO Box 87, Glen Aplin, Queensland 4381, Australia.
North Queensland Conservation Council [formerly TRCC] PO Box 364, Townsville, Queensland 48 10, Australia.
Center for Alternative Mining Development Policy, 210 Avon Street 9, La Crosse, Wisconsin, 54603, USA.
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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