By Michael Krockenberger
ACF Campaigns ManagerMine-site impacts within Australia vary according to the climate and ecosystems in which the mine is situated. For instance, Ranger is in a wet-dry tropical monsoonal climate, whereas Olympic Dam/Roxby Downs is found in the arid zone of South Australia. Paradoxically, the two mines face the contrasting problems of too much water and too little water, and yet a major impact of both is contamination of water bodies.
Ranger, through design faults arising from over-estimation of evaporation and under-estimation of rainfall, has had ongoing problems with the disposal of contaminated water. Radionuclides and heavy metals find their way into the wetlands of Kakadu National Park through water disposal, leaching and erosion. Although diluted by wet season rainfall, these pollutants accumulate in organisms. The continuation and proposed extension of uranium processing at Ranger through the milling of Jabiluka ore would compound these problems. Similar problems of water disposal and wetland contamination would arise at Koongarra.
Olympic Dam is a huge mine and has a voracious appetite for processing water. It currently draws this from Borefield A, located north of the mine in the Great Artesian Basin, at the rate of about 15 million litres per day. Mine expansion is resulting in the development of Borefield B further north-east, which will provide for a total of 42 million litres per day until 2036. This is an enormous burden on the basin's fossil water resources. The entire pastoral industry and town use for the basin in South Australia is 130 million litres per day.
Poor design and management of waste at Olympic Dam has seen up to five billion litres of highly toxic and acidic water leak from the tailings dam into groundwater. This was kept secret for years by Western Mining until the evidence became overwhelming.
Three of the uranium mines currently proposed for Australia - Kintyre, Beverley and Honeymoon - are in arid areas and would require underground water, with the very real potential for similar problems of groundwater contamination.
It is worth remembering Rum Jungle, the uranium mine south of Darwin which operated in the 1950s and 60s. The clean-up of radioactive contamination cost the Australian government far more than it ever earned from the mine. Mining techniques have improved since then, but community expectations of environmental protection have increased and action is demanded to maintain the integrity of national parks, world heritage areas and the wider Australian environment.
Article from "Unclean, Unsafe & Unwanted - The Nuclear Industry Nightmare",
a special insert prepared for the June 1996 issue of Habitat,
produced by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
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