Tuesday, July 31, 2012

For the love of money



     The Lizards Revenge - The Gates of hell   
     Protesting the expansion of Olympic Dam, the world's largest Uranium mine



The event captured my imagination. I had been working on a Carnival travelling down the West Coast of Australia.  A friend working there had told me of his plans of attending.  I immediately  knew that I also wanted to go.   A group of us planned to get to Perth and then hitch from there.  Our plans drew excitement and furnished enlivening conversations over the next  few weeks. 

This is my first campaign.  I knew nothing about anything that I thought I was supposed to know, and felt quickly out of my depth. I am accustomed to being thrown into new experiences, so I was brave but knew better.  I was correct in my estimations and wrong at the same time.  I met really good people there. I learnt so much.  I'm glad to have had the opportunity to be there, when the only thing I felt I could offer was my presence. 

This is what I learned:

Australia currently has four Uranium mines.  Three of these mines are in South Australia, Olympic Dam, Beverly and Honeymoon. The fourth Ranger is in the Northern Territory at the top of this map. During the course of the time that this was published I learnt that there are five working Uranium mines in Australia.


On April 28 2007 Kevin Rudd overturned The Australian Labour Party's (His own party)  25 year ban on new mines, to allow the expansion of Uranium mining in Australia.  New Leases are popping up everywhere.


The Pawns move into place...

The idea of mining takes me back to conversations about job descriptions which I deliberately tuned out of.  It reminds me of Snow white and the seven dwarfs. It came as a surprise to me to learn how Uranium is mined. Conventional mining involves removing rock (ore) from the ground, breaking it up and treating it to remove the minerals being sought. Not rocket science.  The disturbing factor is when you mine Uranium it comes as a package deal with it's friends...Here are some of their names:

THORIUM
RADIUM
LEAD
BISMUTH
POLONIUM

I wouldn't want to be stuck in a room with any of these bad boys.



Uranium and all it's friends are safely nestled in the ground, cushioned by Mother Earth's bosom.  Softly sleeping like the "Titans". In Greek mythology the Titan's were a Primeval race which ruled during the Golden Age, the children of Gaia (earth mother) and Uranus (Heaven) imprisoned in the earth by Zeus.  They were immortal ( A little like Uranium) and had terrible strength and stamina.  But back to the subject. When you emancipate this from the ground serious shit hits the fan.  I do literally mean Airborne.  Mining only extracts  the Uranium.  The rest is abandoned in crushed rock.  Radium is very toxic.  I was surprised at the magnitude of the proposed dust ridden rock pile.  I believe it is 70 million tonnes of radioactive tailing's piled as high as a football stadium and then some.   Imagine that travelling in a dust storm?  If you inhale Radium or Radon it locates specifically in the lung.  It causes cancer amongst other things.
 
Basics of RadiationCharacteristics of Alpha Radiation
1. Alpha radiation is not able to penetrate skin.
2. Alpha-emitting materials can be harmful to humans if the materials are inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through open wounds.

Antoine Henri Becquerei discovered radioactivity by subjecting Uranium to a photographic plate (1896)


A lump of Uranium made an image on a photographic plate.  It radiates it's own energy and doesn't need an outside force to influence it.  I don't need to list some of the ingenious way's you can have your Uranium served.  Or do I?  Here is one of the most famous examples:




But wait...there is more.  There is another way of mining Uranium which two of the three South Australian mines employ currently.  The name,  In Situ leaching.


"Where the ore body exists in a saturated sandstone aquifer, boreholes are drilled into it, and the surrounding water is treated with chemicals. This enables all the uranium to be dissolved and leached from the ore body, as the chemical solution circulates through it. The solution is then pumped back to the surface through different boreholes and the uranium is recovered. This process is also known as solution mining"

In other words, they drill massive holes in the ground.  They pump poison into the surrounding water so as to dissolve the Uranium.  Then they suck it back up to the surface and extract the Uranium. It seems straight forward.  The water that they intend to draw from is The Great Artesian Basin.  Actually, Olympic Dam mine already draws 35 million litres a day from this water source.  Nothing worth worrying about, it's just an ancient underground water source spanning all the way across Australia. If all rivers lead to the ocean, I wonder if this will affect the underground water supplies which would eventually end up being consumed by humans or animals?  The argument is highly likely.  Oh and when the mine is up and running at full potential, it plans to make use of an estimated 42 million litres of that water a day.  Mining is thirsty work.

The Great Artesian Basin

There are many more things I could say on this topic. The word that resonates the most with me in response to it all is "Seriously?"  What good is a power source that you have to die a little to have?  It breaks your DNA which not only affects you, but also any children  you have.  It effectively destroys the land that supports us as a human beings to the extent that we are unable to live on it. We can't drink the water or breathe the air. You must be joking  if you can't see that this is not a good idea?  I read some articles about the health benefits of Uranium.  That had to be the shittiest  flimsiest argument someone has ever tried to debate.


Sellafield, UK
Three Mile Island, USA
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Fukishima, Japan

What do these places have in common? 

The Lizards Revenge music and arts festival was awesome.


The name springs from an Aboriginal Myth about Kalta the sleepy lizard.  BHP Billiton plan their expansion of the Olympic Dam mine.  The location in which they intend to expand their mining escapades- according to Aboriginal Lore- is the head of the lizard.  They intend to enlarge the gaping wound with open cut surgery, into the brain of a large mythological beast.  How intelligent is that?  Have you heard about earthquakes happening in conjunction with mining?  I have recently seen some irrefutable data concerning these coincidence's.




For the love of money? Silly.