The Yeelirrie uranium project is a uranium deposit located approximately 70 km southwest of Wiluna, in the

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region of

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. The name Yeelirrie is taken from the local sheep station. There are proposals to mine other uranium deposits in the Wiluna area: the Lake Maitland, Centipede, Millipede and Lake Way uranium projects.

History

The Yeelirrie uranium deposit was discovered in mid-1971 by

WMC Resources WMC Resources Limited was an Australian diversified mining company. History Western Mining Corporation (WMC) was formed in 1933, when William Robinson, the Australian-born London-based managing director of Broken Hill Associated Smelters, wa ...

. WMC reached an agreement with Esso and the

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Urangesellschaft Australia Pty Ltd in 1978 to co-finance the project, which was then scheduled for production by 1984. Work on the mine development was underway by 1980 and trial mining was carried out. A pilot processing plant was established at Kalgoorlie in late 1980 and detailed metallurgical studies were undertaken from 1980 to 1982. A feasibility study for production at the rate of of U₃O₈ per year was completed in August 1982. There was also potential for 1,000 tonnes per year of vanadium oxide by-product. The succession of the Australian Labor Party to the federal government and that party's "

Three mine policy The three-mine policy, introduced in 1984 and abandoned in 1996, was a policy of the government of Australia to limit the number of uranium mines in the country to three.

" put a stop to the project by 1983. Yeelirrie was placed in care and maintenance. Site rehabilitation was completed in 2003.Yeelirrie Project Overview
BHP Billiton website, published: June 2009, accessed: 17 February 2011 The project was acquired by

BHP Billiton BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

in 2005 when it acquired WMC. BHP reactivated the project after the strongest uranium market in over 25 years and a 2008 change in government policy. The company planned to start mining at Yeelirrie by 2014, producing approximately of uranium oxide per week. The mine was expected to have a life of 20–40 years. Ore would be treated on site and then transported by road to Kalgoorlie, from where it would be railed to either

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or the

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, where there are established facilities to store and export uranium oxides. BHP scaled back the production of the proposed mine in early 2010, from per annum to of U₃O₈, in part because a proposed additional acid

heap leach Heap leaching is an industrial mining process used to extract precious metals, copper, uranium, and other compounds from ore using a series of chemical reactions that absorb specific minerals and re-separate them after their division from other e ...

circuit was deemed uneconomic due to high acid consumption. The project came under criticism at BHP's 2010 annual general meeting from local Aboriginal groups regarding their concerns which included the employment of indigenous residents near BHP's mines in WA, and the need for reassurance from BHP that there would be minimal impact on the surrounding land at the planned mine. The local Wongutha people considered Yeelirrie as a "place of death", and that needed to be explored in heritage surveys. In February 2011, an environmental impact survey found a total of 143 species from 70 genera were recorded, most of which were widespread and common in the region. The survey also discovered 3 new previously unknown species. One of these species, now known as '' Atriplex yeelirrie'', was declared threatened and has a highly restricted distribution, only found in two known locations, approximately 30 km apart. The north western population (of an estimated 84,510 individuals) is located on ground that coincides with the central part of the proposed open pit mine. The south western population comprises an estimated 190,656 individuals and was unimpacted by planned developments. In August 2012, BHP sold the project to Canadian mining company

Cameco Cameco Corporation (formerly Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation) is the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. In 2015, it was the world's second largest uranium producer, accounting for 18 ...

for US$430 million. The Yeelirrie uranium project was granted environmental approval by the Western Australian Minister for the Environment in January 2017. An application to invalidate the decision was lodged by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of the Conservation Council of Western Australia and a small number of

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have right ...

. It did not challenge the merits of the environmental assessment, but rather disputed the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (EPA) procedure and the ability of the Minister for the Environment to make approval decisions. This was rejected in February 2018. An appeal to the Western Australia Court of Appeal was dismissed in 2019.

Reserves and resources

At 31 December 2018 the measured and indicated resource for the project was 58,100 tonnes (128.1 million pounds) of U₃O₈, with an average grade of 0.15% U₃O₈.

References

External links

Names Search Results - Yeelirrie

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website
MINEDEX website
Database of the

Department of Mines and Petroleum The Department of Mines and Petroleum was a department of the Government of Western Australia until it was superseded by the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety on 1 July 2017.

BHP Billiton website
{{BHP Billiton BHP Mid West (Western Australia) Mining in Western Australia Uranium mining in Western Australia