Australia’s Next Uranium Mine

Australia’s “three (uranium) mine policy” that was enacted in 1983, stopped Australia’s then burgeoning uranium industry in its tracks, with all other approvals seemingly withdrawn except it seems for the ones that were producing, namely Nabarlek (NT) (stopped production in 1988 and was environmentally cleaned up, though apparently held by Cogema), Ranger (NT) (still owned by ERA which became a subsidiary of RIO) and Olympic Dam (SA) (WMC’s now BHPB’s), as shown in Figure 1.

Flat Gold Mineralisation

We find that our (ERA) research often has a common theme within a particular year, be it nickel or China or this year (2007) so far, flat gold mineralisation.

Divergent Nickel Lava Channels

Sally Malay’s recent discovery of the Deacon orebody (probably >60,000t Ni @ at Lanfranchi @ 2.6%Ni, being still open at depth with intersections of 93m @ 2.24%Ni & 72m @ 2.95%Ni), appears to be another diverging nickel lava channel, raising the question as to whether they are more common than envisaged.

The Case for a New Ni Concentrator at Widgiemooltha

In June 2007, the BHPB nickel concentrator at Kambalda reached its nameplate capacity of 1.5mtpa, only the second time it has done so (the first being in 1988/89). It has been estimated that debottlenecking of the circuit could add another 200,000tpa of ore capacity, and spending ~A$25m on the front end could increase the capacity by a further 400,000tpa to 500,000tpa, or a total of 2.1mtpa to 2.2mtpa.

Grade Variability in Orebodies – Footwall to Hangingwall

The variation of grade in orebodies from higher grade footwall through to lower grade hangingwall is well-known when based on komatiite lava flows or VMS feeders, however, during the past year we have observed this phenomena where there is no clear feeder zone resulting in a subaqueous flow or classic lava flow.