Olympic Dam uranium mine at risk from earthquakes
from our Seismology Watcher, 28 feb 12, Australian Yet another timely warning for Quarry Australia following seismologist, Edward Cranswick’s peer-reviewed paper on the 35-km-long, steeply dipping Mashers Fault which passes through the middle of the Olympic Dam ore body. The fault length implies an earthquake of maximum about 7.
An observation by Cranswick is that censoring of Australian lists of earthquakes and their corresponding source parameters, (i.e., time, location, depth, magnitude) has taken place.
Cranswick, who investigated earthquakes for the US Geological Survey for 22 years, suggests that the connection between mining and sesmicity (earthquakes) is obscured in Australia particularly the seismic hazard of the OD project in SA. Seemingly, BHP’s proposed expansion and potential radioactive fall-out at the Olympic Dam project in the event of a “natural” catastrophe reveals scant regard for public health and safety. However, there is nothing like an outraged Momma Nature (whose **se is being chewed by the mining industry) to make an ecocidal event, a grim reality.
Cranswick also makes reference to the Barrick/Newmont super pit and its connection to the unprecedented 5.2 magnitude earthquake that occurred in the stable continental region of Kalgoorlie/Boulder in April 2010. And what a pitiful mess that made of the historic buildings in the main street of Boulder which is about a kilometre from the super pit.
En garde my fellow Australians, asleep at the wheel.
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