Antinuclear

Olympic Dam uranium mine outage: jobs at risk?

Long outage expected for Olympic Dam THE AUSTRALIAN Matt Chambers | October 22, 2009 BHP Billiton has confirmed that damage to its Olympic Dam underground copper and uranium mine, caused by a plummeting fully loaded ore skip, will keep the operation at one-quarter capacity for up to six months. ……

 

We expect ore hoisting will be at approximately 25 per cent capacity until full production resumes in the third quarter of the 2010 financial year,” BHP said yesterday in its first-quarter production report.

The damage happened on October 6 when a breakdown in the hoisting system sent a full skip of ore hurtling to the bottom of the 800m deep Clarke mine shaft, which was the bigger of the two at Olympic Dam.

The weight of the loaded ore skip that fell sent another skip on a linked cable shooting up into the headframe at the top of the Clark shaft………………….

BHP would give no information on the fate of the more than 3000 workers at the operation during the outage of up to six months. It would also not say whether the smelter could be economically run at just 25 per cent capacity, or what the impact on metal and concentrate sales would be.

Long outage expected for Olympic Dam | The Australian

October 21, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, business, South Australia, uranium | antinuclear, Australia, BHP, BHP Billiton, South Australia, uranium