Beverley Uranium Mine
Encyclopedia
The Beverley Mine is Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

's third uranium mine and Australia's first operating in-situ recovery
In-situ leach
In-situ leaching , also called in-situ recovery or solution mining, is a mining process used to recover minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into a deposit, in situ....

 mine. It is located 35 km from Lake Frome
Lake Frome
Lake Frome is a large endorheic lake in South Australia, east of the Northern Flinders Ranges. It is a large, shallow, unvegetated salt pan, 100 km long and 40 km wide, lying mostly below sea level and having a total surface area of 259,615 hectares...

 at the northern end of the Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges is the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts approximately north west of Adelaide. The discontinuous ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna...

 in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

 and opened in 2001. Beverley Uranium Mine was discovered by one of Bill Siller's companies and was named after his wife—Beverley Siller.

Beverley is a paleaochannel uranium deposit. The uranium mineralisation (mainly coffinite
Coffinite
Coffinite is a uranium-bearing silicate mineral with formula: U1-x4x.It occurs as black incrustations, dark to pale-brown in thin section. It has a grayish black streak. It has a brittle to conchoidal fracture. The hardness of coffinite is between 5 and 6.It was first described in 1954 for an...

) is hosted by loose sands in the channel of a former river. The ore bearing horizon is now at a depth of about 100 to 150m. The deposit is estimated to contain 21,000 tonnes of uranium oxide
Uranium oxide
Uranium oxide is an oxide of the element uranium.The metal uranium forms several oxides:* Uranium dioxide or uranium oxide * Uranium trioxide or uranium oxide...

 for a mine life of 15 to 30 years. Uranium is extracted by in-situ leaching, involving the injection of a fluid containg sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide into the ore-bearing permeable horizon to mobilise the uranium. The fluid is then recovered and uranium is extracted at a central plant using ion-exchange. The final concentrate is trucked to Port Adelaide
Port Adelaide
Port Adelaide is a suburb of Adelaide lying about 14 kilometres northwest of the City of Adelaide. It lies within the City of Port Adelaide Enfield and is the main port for the city of Adelaide...

 and then shipped to oversea customers.

In August 2008, federal approval was given to Heathgate Resources for a greater area to be accessed for mining in order that the pre-approved volume of material could be extracted from the mine.

Between 1998 and 2007, Heathgate reported 57 spill incidents to Primary Industries and Resources South Australia (PIRSA).

In 2005, the Four Mile
Four Mile uranium mine
Four Mile is a proposed uranium mine in Australia. The proposed mine is sited in the far north of the state of South Australia, around north of the state capital, Adelaide and from the existing Beverley uranium mine....

 uranium deposit was discovered a few kilometres north-west of Beverley. The deposit is owned by Quasar Resources, (a 100% subsidiary of Heathgate), and Alliance Resources. Development of the deposit was approved in 2009. It is planned to do the final uranium extraction and concentrate production for Four Mile at the Beverley Plant.

The mine borders on the protected Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary
Arkaroola, South Australia
Arkaroola Village is the settlement and resort at the hub of a wilderness sanctuary in the Northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia, adjacent to Gammon Ranges National Park and the Mawson Plateau....

 that has also been subjected to uranium mining. Following unprecedented public pressure, the South Australian government announced on 22 July 2011 that steps would be taken to ban mining and exploration in Arkaroola.

See also

  • List of uranium mines
  • Sandstone uranium deposits
  • Uranium mining in Australia
    Uranium mining in Australia
    Radioactive ores were first extracted at Radium Hill in 1906, and Mount Painter in South Australia in the 1930s, to recover radium for medical use. Several hundred kilograms of uranium were also produced....


External links

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