Communication key for uranium

FIGHTING fiction with facts will be pivotal for the successful establishment of a uranium mining industry in Western Australia, according to the company planning the Pilbara’s first major mine.

Canadian uranium giant Cameco, together with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation, underlined WA’s potential as a major uranium supplier in mid 2008 when they jointly paid $US495 million to buy Rio Tinto’s long-stalled Kintyre project on the western edge of the Great Sandy Desert.

Cameco hopes to sanction development by the end of 2013 in a bid to produce up to 3,500 tonnes of uranium oxide annually by late 2015.

Though uranium mining remains a deeply divisive issue, the growing global importance of nuclear power as a counter to rising carbon emissions has led a steady rise in public support in recent years.

At least five major uranium mines are now in the advanced stages of planning in WA, led by BHP Billiton’s big Yeelirrie project near Wiluna, slated for production in 2014.

But that has sparked a backlash from anti-nuclear activists, particularly given the dependence of Julia Gillard’s newly installed federal Labor government on support from a handful of Greens and independent parliamentarians.

Local Greens MP Scott Ludlam even named Kintyre and Yeelirrie as key targets in his campaign to stop what he emotively described as “one of the most destructive and volatile trades there is”.

Speaking to journalists at Kintyre this week, Cameco Australia managing director Ron Matthews said he was confident most people’s concerns could be allayed by engaging in an open dialogue and focusing on the facts.

“It’s our job to educate people,” he said, adding that many people’s concerns were genuinely held, but often reflected a limited knowledge about the industry.

In particular, Mr Matthews said it was vital to maintain a detailed ongoing dialogue with the local Martu people, whose support was critical to the project proceeding.

To that end, talks with the Western Desert Lands Aboriginal Corporation are due to start later this week as a first step toward a comprehensive agreement covering future development and community participation.

Cameco Australia environmental manager Simon Williamson said the radiation risks associated with projects such as Kintyre were minimal.

Workers were likely to receive only a fraction of the maximum allowable exposure for the general population, which is itself one 20th the level allowed for radiation industry workers.

The risks associated with trucking yellowcake were also tiny, he said, noting a person would need to sit on a fully-loaded sea container of yellowcake for a week to receive the same dose of radiation as a passenger flying from Australia to Canada and back.

Cameco estimates only 50-60 truckloads will be despatched each year at full production, with ore to be trucked to Kalgoorlie and then railed to Adelaide for export overseas.

Critically, Mr Williamson envisaged “no showstoppers” in the environmental approval process, with the proposed mine similar in scale and impact to a small gold mine.

And despite expecting green activists to “muddy the waters”, especially at community level, he was confident strong government support for the industry would avert any green roadblocks to development.

Working in Cameco’s favour is its decades of experience in Canada, where it has built strong ties with indigenous and local communities. Since 1988, Cameco estimates it has safely produced and trucked 90,000t of uranium over 38 million kilometres of roads in North America.