First uranium mine in Australia at Radium Hill in South Australia's north in 1906; Port Pirie gets treatment plant

Remnants of the uranium mine at Radium Hill, first opened in 1906

Australian mining of uranium – as with copper, lead/silver, iron ore and gold – started in South Australia.

Uranium, a known resource in Australia since the 1890s, was mined at Radium Hill from 1906 and then at Mount Painter (next to Mount Gee) in South Australia.

A refinery at Hunter’s Hill near Sydney processed the Radium Hill ore between 1911 and 1915 for radium bromide and uranium. Radium was used for medical research.Serious uranium exploration started in 1944 after requests from the United States and United Kingdom governments. In 1948, tax concessions were offered by the federal government for uranium discoveries.

A £1,800,000 uranium treatment plant, operated by the South Australian government at Port Pirie opened in 1955, processing ore from Radium Hill and Wild Dog Hill (Myponga), south of Adelaide. The complex supplied the UK-USA Combined Development Agency. It closed in 1962.

In 1954, Radium Hill reopened as a uranium mine and mining started at several other sites in the late 1950s. By 1964, this had mostly ended, due to depleted reserves and filled contracts.

South Australia’s Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs started in 1988, operated by Western Mining but taken over by BHP Billiton in 2005. Olympic Dam was mainly focussed on copper, with uranium as a byproduct with gold and silver. South Australia was again back to being the largest producer of uranium in Australia and it has 25% of the world’s known recoverable uranium reserves and 80% of Australia’s. 

As the nation’s largest producer, South Australia exported about 50 shipments a year of 500 containers of uranium in locked and securely sealed steel drums, through Port Adelaide. It exports enough uranium to power 20 million homes.