It seems Australia is now to get a fifth uranium mine. The Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill has given conditional approval for the operations to begin at the Honeymoon Mine in South Australia's far north-east, not far from Broken Hill. But there is a snag. He's not happy with the proposal to dispose of the mine's waste, which would involve pouring sulfuric acid and radioactive waste back to the ground. And until then the mine is not allowed to proceed.
Conservation groups claim the method of mining itself is a licence to pollute.
Anne Barker has been following the story this morning and she joins us now in South Australia. John, it's a fairly small mine, which is just over the border in South Australia from Broken Hill. It would only produce about 1000 tonnes a year, which is considerably less than say the Ranger or Roxby Downs mines in the Northern Territory and South Australia. The big difference is that the way of mining uranium would be a process of acid leaching, instead of an open cut mine or an underground mine as we've seen in most other mines around the developed world. It would be a matter of pouring thousands of litres of sulfuric acid directly into the ground to dissolve the uranium out of the earth, and then suck it to the surface.