Resource
Uranium (U3O8)
Location
Between Northern Flinders Ranges and Lake Frome, approximately 550 km north of Adelaide and 300 km northeast of Port Augusta
Company and tenement information
- Heathgate Resources Pty Ltd
- Beverley Mine tenement information and Beverley North tenement information can be found on the South Australian Resources Information Gateway (SARIG)
Mining operation and current status
- Care and maintenance - plants are processing product from the Four Mile Uranium Mine
- Ore at Beverley and Beverley North exists in an underground aquifer and is extracted by in situ recovery (ISR), the chemical process of extracting minerals from the host rock underground through the utilisation of specially designed wellfields
- Oxygen and a weak acid mining solution is pumped through the ore body to dissolve the uranium minerals
- The mobilised uranium is pumped to the surface, loaded onto resin at the Beverley North Pannikan plant then transferred to the Beverley processing plant where it is taken out of solution through an ion exchange (IX) process, dried and packaged for export
- More about in situ recovery mining
Approval process
The Beverley and Beverley North PEPR provides a background to the project, details of constructed project infrastructure, description of the proposed operational activities, an assessment of the environmental social and economic risks resulting from the operations of the project, management, mitigation and control measures to ameliorate residual risk, and details of the project closure.
The deposit
- Low to medium grade uranium ore deposits at Beverley and Beverley North exist in permeable sediments contained in the saline and naturally radioactive aquifers between 100 m to 250 m below the ground surface, in either the Namba or Eyre Formations.
- The aquifer sediments are confined above by clays and confined below by impermeable mudstones.
- The Beverley North Mine is comprised of a number of deposits - Pepegoona, Pepegoona West and Pannikan deposits.
Resource estimates and production estimates
- Company released resource estimates and production statistics for South Australia's major operating and approved mines are summarised in South Australia's major operating/approved mines: resources estimates and production statistics (PDF, updated regularly).
Current documents
Program for environment protection and rehabilitation (PEPR)
- Beverley Mine Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation (PEPR) for ML 6321 (PDF 33.6 MB) (PDF, 35.6 MB)
- Beverley North Mine Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation (PEPR) for ML 6387 (PDF 55.9 MB)
- Beverley Gravel Pits G1 and Beverley Calcrete Pit 4 PEPR 2016 (for EMLs 6049, 6050, 6051 and 6392) (PDF 2.2 MB)
Mining compliance reports
Uranium incident reports
South Australia’s uranium mines and processing facilities are required to report incidents involving the unplanned release of radioactive process materials, radioactive liquids or radioactive wastes associated with the physical and chemical processing of uranium ores, following standard criteria and procedures
More information
For more information about this mining operation contact DEM.MiningRegRehab@sa.gov.au