Tailings Storage Facility
After uranium is leached from crushed ore, the resulting slurry residue, called tailings, is currently transferred by a closed pumping system to the tailings dam for temporary storage.
The tailings dam also provides storage for process water. The process water covers the tailings to ensure they do not dry out.
The handling and storage of tailings and process water is carefully controlled to ensure that there are no health risks to people, wildlife or the environment.
Ultimately, the tailings will be returned to the mined out pits for secure containment and rehabilitation.
The tailings dam continues to outperform the original design parameters. The dam's performance and integrity is closely monitored, with boreholes, electromagnetic surveys and visual inspections.
The performance of the tailings dam is regularly reviewed by ERA and stakeholders to ensure operation within optimal design parameters.
In 2011 ERA completed a four metre raising of the Tailings Storage Facility wall to provide extra process water storage.
In 2011 ERA also began an extensive field programme to implement the recommendations of a detailed independent review of the ground water systems around the Tailings Storage Facility.
The review was commissioned by ERA and the GAC. A stakeholder working group was established to review the Tailings Storage Facility and carried out by technical services consultant URS.
Review recommendations included strengthening the monitoring and modelling of ground water movement and composition around the facility. As part of the field programme, an additional 80 ground water monitoring bores were drilled and developed in 2011.
Water sampling from these bores is using the latest micro sampling and purging techniques developed in the United States designed to minimise water disturbance within the bore water column and improve accuracy of results.
The Federal Government's Supervising Scientist stated in his 2010/2011 annual report that the extensive monitoring and research programmes of the Supervising Scientist Division "confirm that the environment has remained protected".
