Olympic Dam SML1

 copper mine, mining, silver mine, uranium mine

This is SML1 (Special Mining Lease 1) which is for the Olympic Dam mine, and it was named after Olympic Dam which was a livestock watering dam built during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics which is located close to the discovery drill site. It was granted on May 9, 1986 with an expiry date of May 8, 2036. The tenement is licensed for Silver, Uranium Oxide, Gold, and copper. The tenement operator name is BHP Billiton Olympic Dam Corporation Pty Ltd.

The Olympic Dam orebody was discovered in 1975 by Western Mining Corporation and was formed around 1.6 billion years ago within the Olympic Dam Breccia Complex. In June of that year the first hole, (RD1) drilled by Ted Whenan to locate the expected copper was a failure, but a month later they did find the copper. Following a successful trial of the pilot plant underground mining started in 1988. The deposit is one the largest base metal discoveries ever found and has concentrations of: iron, copper, uranium, gold, silver, barium, fluorine and rare earths, although current mining is for copper, uranium, gold, and silver which are the only ones considered commercially viable. As for statistics, it is the worlds largest uranium resource, 4th largest copper resource, and 4th largest gold resource. The life of mine for Olympic Dam is estimated at 70-80 years.

The existing mining method uses a sublevel open stope and access to the mine is via 2 mine shafts and a decline. A third mine shaft, Robinson, is no longer in use. There are also 10 intake shafts and 20 exhaust shafts which were raise bored from the underground mine.


Reference for information:
www.bhpbilliton.com/bb/ourBusinesses/baseMetals/olympic...

www.mining-technology.com/projects/olympic-dam/