Antinuclear

Eastern Australia – radioactive risk from BHP’s Olympic Dam uranium mine

Australia: Red Sky in the Morning, Radioactive Warming Political Affairs By Peter Mac 14 Oct 09 “………..there is a strong possibility that future dust storms sweeping across from South Australia will be radioactive and will carry toxic metal contaminants.

Pollution on an Olympic scale

A group of fifteen eminent scientists is now warning that BHP-Billiton’s proposed enlargement of its massive Olympic Dam uranium mine will result in massive pollution of the atmosphere and groundwater. They have called for a review of the health impacts from proposed enlargement of the mine, and for BHP to set aside funds to pay for medical effects on the population of areas affected by pollution from the mine, possibly for centuries.

The enlargement would create the world’s largest open-cut mine. During its operating life, some 242 million tons of radioactive tailings, containing uranium, copper, mercury and arsenic, would be stored on the site.

A series of dams, covering 4,000 hectares across the site, would contain 5.5 million tons of the tailings. However, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the mine’s expansion only mentions lining 15 percent of the dam walls, which means that by 2020 the dams could be leaking eight million liters per annum and entering the groundwater around the dams.

As documentary film maker David Bradbury recently commented: “…with the open-cut expansion that BHP wants permission from state and federal governments to go ahead with, the radioactive tailings left behind will blow over the eastern coast centers of the most populated cities in Australia.”

Political Affairs Magazine – Australia: Red Sky in the Morning, Radioactive Warming

October 14, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, New South Wales, uranium | antinuclear, Australia, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium