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Queenstown is a town in the West Coast region of the island of Tasmania, Australia. It is in a valley on the western slopes of Mount Owen on the West Coast Range.
The King River is a major perennial river in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia.
The Ranger Uranium Mine was a uranium mine in the Northern Territory of Australia. The site is surrounded by, but separate from Kakadu National Park, 230 km east of Darwin. The orebody was discovered in late 1969, and the mine commenced operation in 1980, reaching full production of uranium oxide in 1981 and ceased stockpile processing on 8 January 2021. Mining activities had ceased in 2012. It is owned and operated by Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), a public company 86.33% owned by Rio Tinto Group, the remainder held by the public. Uranium mined at Ranger was sold for use in nuclear power stations in Japan, South Korea, China, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is Australia's national environmental organisation, launched in 1965 in response to a proposal by the World Wide Fund for Nature for a more co-ordinated approach to sustainability.
Rum Jungle is a locality in the Northern Territory of Australia located about 105 kilometres south of Darwin on the East Branch of the Finniss River. It is the site of a uranium deposit, found in 1949, which has been mined.
Alligator Rivers is the name of an area in an Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia, containing three rivers, the East, West, and South Alligator Rivers. It is regarded as one of the richest biological regions in Australia, with part of the region in the Kakadu National Park. It is an Important Bird Area (IBA), lying to the east of the Adelaide and Mary River Floodplains IBA. It also contains mineral deposits, especially uranium, and the Ranger Uranium Mine is located there. The area is also rich in Australian Aboriginal art, with 1500 sites. The Kakadu National Park is one of the few World Heritage sites on the list because of both its natural and human heritage values. They were explored by Lieutenant Phillip Parker King in 1820, who named them in the mistaken belief that the crocodiles in the estuaries were alligators.
Energy Resources of Australia Ltd is a public company based in Australia. It is a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group which as of 2021 owns 86.3% of the company. The remainder is publicly held and traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. The chairman is Peter McMahon and Chief Executive is Andrea Sutton.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999(Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia that provides a framework for protection of the Australian environment, including its biodiversity and its natural and culturally significant places. Enacted on 17 July 2000, it established a range of processes to help protect and promote the recovery of threatened species and ecological communities, and preserve significant places from decline. The Act is as of June 2020 administered by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. Lists of threatened species are drawn up under the Act, and these lists, the primary reference to threatened species in Australia, are available online through the Species Profile and Threats Database (SPRAT).
The Mount Lyell Remediation and Research and Demonstration Program was a joint rehabilitation programme between the Supervising Scientist Australia and the Department of Environment and Land Management, Tasmania to clean up the King River, Queen River and Macquarie Harbour.
Kakadu National Park, located in the Northern Territory of Australia, possesses within its boundaries a number of large uranium deposits. The uranium is legally owned by the Australian Government, and is sold internationally, having a large effect on the Australian economy. The mining has been controversial, due to the widespread publicity regarding the potential danger of nuclear power and uranium mining, as well as because of objections by some Indigenous groups. This controversy is significant because it involves a number of important political issues in Australia: Native Title, the environment, and Federal-State-Territory relations.
Kevin Buzzacott, often referred to as Uncle Kev as an Aboriginal elder, is an Indigenous Australian from the Arabunna nation in northern South Australia. He has campaigned widely for cultural recognition, justice and land rights for Aboriginal people, and has initiated and led numerous campaigns including against uranium mining at Olympic Dam mine in South Australia on Kokatha land, and the exploitation of the water from the Great Artesian Basin.
Mary Kathleen was a mining settlement in north-western Queensland, Australia. It is located in the Selwyn Range between Mount Isa and Cloncurry.
Radioactive ores were first extracted in South Australia at Radium Hill in 1906 and Mount Painter in 1911. 2,000 tons of ore were treated to recover radium for medical use. Several hundred kilograms of uranium were also produced for use in ceramic glazes.
Radium Hill is a former minesite in South Australia which operated from 1906 until 1961. It was Australia's first uranium mine, years before the country's next major mines at Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory (opened in 1950), and the Mary Kathleen mine in Queensland (1958). The associated settlement which once housed up to 1,100 people is now a ghost town, largely abandoned and demolished. The former townsite and cemetery were provisionally listed on the South Australian Heritage Register on 24 August 2016. During its main period of production between 1954 and 1961 the mine produced nearly 1 million tonnes of davidite-bearing ore to produce about 860 tons of U3O8.
The uranium mining debate covers the political and environmental controversies of uranium mining for use in either nuclear power or nuclear weapons.
The world's largest producer of uranium is Kazakhstan, which in 2019 produced 43% of the world's mining output. Canada was the next largest producer with a 13% share, followed by Australia with 12%. Uranium has been mined in every continent except Antarctica.
The Olympic Dam mine is a large poly-metallic underground mine located in South Australia, 550 km (340 mi) NNW of Adelaide. It is the fourth largest copper deposit and the largest known single deposit of uranium in the world. Copper is the largest contributor to total revenue, accounting for approximately 70% of the mine's revenue, with the remaining 25% from uranium, and around 5% from silver and gold. BHP has owned and operated the mine since 2005. The mine was previously owned by Western Mining Corporation.
Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry (RUEI) (also known as the Fox Report) was a committee established by the Whitlam government in Australia, which sought to explore the environmental concerns surrounding uranium mining.
Moonta Mines is a locality at the northern end of the Yorke Peninsula, adjoining the town of Moonta. It is located in the Copper Coast Council. From 1861 to 1923, it was the centre of a copper mining industry that formed colonial South Australia's largest mining enterprise. A substantial portion of the locality is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register as the Moonta Mines State Heritage Area and on the National Heritage List as the Australian Cornish Mining Heritage Site, Moonta Mines.
References
- ↑ Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, About the Supervising Scientist, retrieved 21 October 2008
