There's uranium in them there hills Wednesday, August 3, 2005 It's a daily struggle for most Australians as they try to find the cheapest fuel around town. Not much out here, except a drill rig.
Not much out here, except a drill rig.
With the price of oil on an upward trajectory, gone are the days when you could fill up the tank for under 30 dollars.
Subsequently the hunt is on for other sources of energy.
With nuclear energy becoming a popular choice for a number of nations around the world, more and more companies are exploring for highly sought after commodity, uranium.
One of these companies is Deep Yellow. Deep Yellow is a Western Australian uranium exploration company, which has been drilling for about a week at a site about 150 kms north west of Alice Springs.
Managing Director, James Pratt is also the exploration manager out on Napperby station at the New Well prospect, where he and his team have been taking samples of the soil.
"They're drilling one of these holes. They're currently down about five metres...Each drill hole is ten metres deep and we take a sample every metre so there's ten samples per hole," says James Pratt.
After the soil and rock samples have been taken, the drill hole is also tested for uranium deposits by feeding a probe down the hole.
The long, metallic cylindrical probe, measures the gamma rays from the rocks, which tells the geologists how much uranium is below the Earth's surface.
"We need to get the gamma probe down the hole as soon as we can after the hole has finished because quite often the holes collapse, so we want to take the readings from them as soon possible after they've been drilled," he says.
Joe Drake-Brockman is a consultant geologist for Deep Yellow and it's his job to record the gamma rays.
The results are fed via a cable, straight into a computer where they can be analysed.
"Generally, in this area, they have been quite good...We'll use (the information) to calculate the ore resource here. In general scheme of things, I'd say it's a low grade resource but because it's close to the surface, it could be minable, but we're a long way from that though, this is just first stage," say Joe.
The reality of Deep Yellow mining uranium in Central Australia is still a number of years away.
Not only is it difficult to get permits to mine uranium but it will also depend on whether the Territory government will endorse this type of mining.
"The State Labor governments are beholden to Federal Labor and that's the problem.
"So we're waiting for Federal Labor to clarify or change their policy...Let me say that I was in South Australia two months ago, at an energy conference and the South Australian mines' minister told everybody there that they were beholden to Labor policy but they didn't agree with it, so the contention seems to be within Labor," says James Pratt exploration manager and managing director of Deep Yellow.
The issue of mining uranium and radioactive waste dumps have certainly been a hotly debated issue within the Northern Territory and further a field.
Naturally, safety is one of the major concerns when it comes to radioactive material.
Mark Sonter is Deep Yellow's radiation safety expert and he was out at the site last week measuring radiation levels.
"He was with us for four days and based on his measurements we did not detect anything out here while we're drilling that is above normal background radiation that you'd receive anywhere in Australia," says James.
James maintains that uranium exploration and mining is perfectly safe and denounces the critics for being misinformed.
"Nobody has contacted me directly to express any opposition to uranium exploration or mining, so what their specific concerns are, I don't know.
"From what I've seen, the people who are most opposed are either choosing to be uniformed or simply are uniformed," says James. Last Update: Wednesday, August 3, 2005. 5:10pm (ACST)
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