Caring for the Environment

The uranium industry is highly regulated with many safeguards in place to protect the community and its environment. UraniumSA has developed procedures and practices to ensure our operations meet all these requirements.

Flora and Fauna

The area of the proposed Blackbush Field Trial site is pastoral country and used for sheep grazing. The vegetation and wildlife are typical of the district.

UraniumSA commissioned environmental specialist organisations to undertake extensive field surveys to assess the flora and fauna in the Samphire region.

These surveys indicated the Samphire site has potentially suitable habitats for six nationally vulnerable bird species and confirmed that two of those species are present in the area.

A specifically commissioned assessment of the species and their habitats has concluded they are distributed throughout the district. With the small footprint and short duration of the proposed Field Trial we have been advised there will be minimal to no impact on these species.

Following the completion of the proposed Field Trial, if a decision is made to progress to full-scale mining, off site arrangements will be made to ensure long-term protection of habitats.

Groundwater

UraniumSA has been monitoring the groundwater system around the Samphire project since 2009 and has a clear and robust understanding of it.

The aquifer containing the uranium mineralisation has a salinity level greater than that of sea water and there is no record of any domestic, commercial or pastoral use of water from this aquifer. Furthermore, there is no prospective use of this groundwater.

The uranium mineralisation at Samphire is contained in sediments which have been in place for some 35 million to 55 million years. An impervious layer of clay and limestone isolates these sediments from the surface. The extensive field testing and trials UraniumSA has undertaken have confirmed this protective layer is continuous within the project area.

Test work has also shown the uranium mineralised rocks contain minerals that will neutralise the injected solutions from the In-Situ Recovery (ISR) process within a very short distance, a few tens of metres, of where they are injected.

For the proposed Field Trial to proceed, UraniumSA is required by the State Government to operate to the very highest standards, which includes ensuring that water chemistry will return to similar conditions to those that currently exist. To achieve this, UraniumSA will establish a groundwater monitoring network to detect any unplanned excursions of mining solutions beyond the site.

Measurement of groundwater movement shows it is a very slow moving system and that it takes more than 2,000 years for water from the proposed field trial site to migrate the 3.5km through the ground to the coast of the Spencer Gulf where it will still be separated from the gulf by a thick confining clay sequence.

Site Rehabilitation

Should the Samphire project not proceed at the end of the ISR field trial, we will take steps to rehabilitate and remediate the site.