Kintyre/Rudall River Uranium Deposit - Rio Tinto

"The three act nightmare of a uranium mine
on Aboriginal land in a national park"

See also : People for Nuclear Disarmament (WA) or Anti-Nuclear Alliance of WA.
Company links - Gulliver Files of RTZ, CRA, plus the Book Plunder!
Commonwealth EIA Process Notifications.
KINTYRE POSTPONED INDEFINITELY!!!

VICTORY (for the moment.....) - WOOHOO !!!

Overview Info :

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  • Now placed permanently on a "care-and-maintenance" basis, although Rio Tinto still intend to restart quickly IF prices rebound.

  • located in Western Australia, approximately 1,200 kms NNE of Perth.

  • owned by Canning Resources (100% subsidiary of CRA-RTZ).

  • proposed as an open cut mine and conventional acid leach treatment.

  • production of 1,200 tonnes per year for a mine life of more than 10 years.

  • Deposit was discovered by CRA Exploration in 1985 within the boundaries of the Karlamilyi-Rudall River National Park. By 1988 reserves of around 35,000 tonnes of uranium oxide had been delineated. Following extensive lobbying by CRA the Kintyre Project Area was excised from the national park by the WA state Liberal government in April 1993, passing legislation that lay on the table from the previous Labor Government (Premier Carmen Lawrence), this excision arose from the 13th of Nov 1990 Resolution of Conflict document produced by the Labor party.

  • Rudall River National Park was established following the recommendations of the Australian Academy of Science in 1963 and in 1977 the park was gazetted. It is the only national park in Australia which encompasses an entire seasonal river system in the arid zone and is listed on the Register of the National Estate. It is the largest National Park in Western Australia and the second largest in Australia and is one of the best examples of an undisturbed desert ecosystem in Australia, and quite possibly the world.

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  • The park follows the course of the Rudall River which rises in rugged hills then flows north east through sand-dune country into Lake Dora on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. It is a vast wilderness area and has a number of different environments ranging from the craggy Throssel and Broadhurst Ranges to the huge expanses of the Lake Dora and Lake Blanche salt lakes. The park is dissected longitudinally by the Rudall river which contains a system of permanent water holes along with ephemeral and semi-ephemeral water courses. The presence of these means that the park has an unusually rich and diverse range of flora and fauna, including frogs, birds, mammals and a great array of reptiles.

  • Many of the plant and animal species found in this environment are either rare or restricted to this specialised habitat. Habitat regeneration after disturbance is also tied to the irregular cyclonic precipitation and subsequently the area is extremely vulnerable to wind erosion and intense rain storms.

  • The processes to be used in extracting the uranium will be undertaken in two stages consisting of a predominately dry upgrading phase, which has very high occupational health and safety implications, and a wet phase where the uranium is recovered. The dry plant will be used because mineralisation at Kintyre is characterised by veins of uranium with little uranium disseminated through the host rock which makes the orebody suitable for radiometric sorting. The accepted fraction of ore will then pass to the wet plant for processing whilst the reject material will be stockpiled. It is noted that processing options for the reject material may be investigated in the future, this processing would require a conventional wet process with all its attendent problems.

  • The Kintyre deposit has an estimated mean uranium recovery rate of 2.75 kg uranium per tonne. Given company figures of an output prospect of 35,000 tonnes of yellowcake we can expect around 12,727,273 tonnes of ore to be processed at the site. This figure does not include the overburden which would have to be removed to allow access to the deposit. The waste products of this process will take up more volume than the original rock. Around 85% of the original radioactivity of the ore will remain in these wastes.

  • In addition to the solid wastes there will be liquid wastes produced at the site. As a rule liquid wastes take up over twice the volume of solid wastes. Estimates based on company data suggest some 25,500,000 tonnes of liquid wastes will be generated. The presence of such materials poses significant environmental problems. The area around the Kintyre site is both arid and fragile. Water is extremely scarce. The constant extraction from subterranean aquifers may have a severe impact. The problems of the storage, treatment and management of mine waste waters are also significant and provide a very real pathway for environmental degradation. The proposed road transport of uranium oxide also poses a risk to both the surrounding environment and persons. The roads in the region are long and rough and subject to extremes of weather and conditions. Accidents in the area are common and the risk of spillage is very real.

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  • Aboriginal traditional owners of the Karlamilyi region have previously expressed deep concerns over the development of the Kintyre deposit. In 1988 the national media carried reports on how two members of the community travelled to London to the Annual General Meeting of RTZ (now known as Rio Tinto, formerly RTZ-CRA) to express their concerns that uranium mining would destroy traditional lifestyles and pose a threat to sacred sites and sites of significance.

    Page last updated September 2, 1999.
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