Olympic Dam: A precious year ahead
AS the largest single deposit of uranium in the world, and one of its most significant deposits of copper, gold and silver, BHP’s Olympic Dam is one of the globe’s premier poly metals mines. The underground mine consists of about 450km of underground roads and tunnels, and ore is transported via a fully-automated subterranean rail network to the crushing, storing and ore hoisting facilities. The mine has a fully integrated ore to metal processing facility that utilises two grinding circuits used to extract high quality copper concentrate from sulphide ore through a flotation extraction process. Olympic Dam’s metallurgical complex includes a grinding and concentrating circuit, a hydrometallurgical plant that uses solvent extraction circuits for copper and uranium, a copper smelter,...