URANIUM giant Cameco has begun canvassing communities along the proposed trucking route from its $500 million Kintyre uranium project in the Pilbara, amplifying calls for a major upgrade of transport links between Kalgoorlie and the state’s north.
URANIUM giant Cameco has begun canvassing communities along the proposed trucking route from its $500 million Kintyre uranium project in the Pilbara, amplifying calls for a major upgrade of transport links between Kalgoorlie and the state’s north.
The Canadian miner this week began a whistlestop tour of shire and community groups along the route between Kintyre and Kalgoorlie ahead of submitting its environmental referral documents later this month.
At its planned output of 3000 tonnes of uranium oxide per year, Kintyre would require an average of one or two truck loads of material to be despatched from the site near Rudall River National Park each week.
But the state of WA’s interior road network means the material will first head north-west to Port Hedland via Telfer and Marble Bar, before being trucked south via Newman, Meekatharra, Mt Magnet, Sandstone, Leinster, Leonora and Menzies to Kalgoorlie.
At Kalgoorlie, Cameco hopes to transfer its product onto rail for the journey to Adelaide, which is one of only two Australian ports licensed to export uranium. It is also examining the potential to truck it all the way to Adelaide, or alternatively truck it to Australia’s other uranium port at Darwin.
Cameco environmental manager Simon Williamson said the company would prefer to use a more direct route, but that would only be possible if there was a major upgrade of the Marble Bar-Newman road and of the roads between Newman and Wiluna.
Other miners are also planning to truck uranium to Kalgoorlie for shipment to Adelaide, with three major mines planned in the Wiluna region at BHP Billiton’s Yeelirrie project, Toro Energy’s Lake Way mine and Mega Uranium’s Lake Maitland site. The combined output of the three Wiluna mines would be in the order of 5000t a year by mid-decade.
Though trucked uranium volumes would be modest at 5-10 trucks a week, the miners’ trucking plans add weight to a renewed push for a multi-million dollar road and rail hub centred in Kalgoorlie.
The proposed hub includes a $30 million rail freight transfer terminal at Parkeston in Kalgoorlie and $200 million upgrade of roads heading north to the Pilbara which could slash hundreds of kilometres from freight haulage routes to the state’s booming north.
Around 30 per cent of rail freight from the eastern states which currently passes through Kalgoorlie is destined for the Pilbara. However, the lack of a rail transfer facility in the town and the poor state of roads to the Pilbara means most freight must first pass through Perth before being hauled north.
The hub is a pet topic of newly elected WA Nationals federal MP Tony Crook and was a hot topic of discussion at Monday’s regional state cabinet meeting in Kalgoorlie.
City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder chief executive Don Burnett said council had received an encouraging response when it presented the hub proposal to cabinet this week.
“We had quite a positive hearing and I think it was invaluable having cabinet in town to be able to present to them the importance of it all,” he said.
“It’s been a long haul, but for once the planets are starting to align, and it’s looking like people are listening.
“Obviously the critical factor is how much freight can be taken off at Kalgoorlie and driven to the north. It’s probably 1000km shorter doing that … and it wouldn’t take long to repay that (investment) if you cut 1000km of transport off.”
Mr Burnett said a detailed cost benefit analysis had not yet been undertaken to accurately estimate the likely benefit of the hub and the volume of traffic able to be diverted away from Perth.
“So that’s one of the things that need to be addressed to really push this forward,” he said. “With all the work that’s going to go on in the Pilbara over the coming years, there is a massive freight task that can be taken away from the metropolitan area and off the Great Northern Highway.”
Mr Burnett said the Goldfields-Esperance Development Commission and other relevant regional development commissions would work together to shore up the business case for both the rail transfer facility and the road upgrade.
However, he said the road upgrade was absolutely integral to the viability of the Parkeston rail facility.
“I doubt that we could justify building the (rail) hub in Kalgoorlie without the blacktop (upgrade), because really the point is getting the freight to the north,” he said.
While the primary purpose of the Parkeston rail facility would be to optimise freight shipments to the north, it would also be of major benefit to uranium producers such as Cameco by providing an efficient and reliable facility for transferring containerised uranium cargoes onto rail for despatch to Adelaide or Darwin.
Cameco and Japan’s Mitsubishi acquired the stalled Kintyre project from Rio Tinto for $570 million in 2008. The partners aim to approve development in 2013 and start production some time in 2015.
