Radium Hill mine leaves a legacy of Australian firsts from its short life (1954-61) in the South Australian outback
Radium Hill, the small South Australian outback mine and town from 1954 to 1961, left its mark on Australia with a legacy of firsts.
• It had been Australia’s first uranium mine, from 1906.
• The uranium ore was named Davidite and the site Radium Hill by Douglas Mawson, possibly the only town site named by him.
• In 1955, the Radium Hill Project was the first mining organisation in Australia to take to court the matter of manning light air-leg mounted rock drills and having one
man to a machine. It was successful in the case and set a precedent for the Australian mining industry.
• It was the first time in the world that the boiling concentrated sulphuric acid technique was used to further process Davidite uranium-bearing ore, at Port Pirie,
• At Radium Hill, the heavy media milling process was used for separating hard rock ore for the first time in Australia.
• It was the first uranium mine in Australia to enter into an export agreement for selling its product overseas.
• The South Australian and federal governments, with the mining industry, established the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories or AMDEL to keep together the science specialists associated with the exploration, mining and milling requirements of Radium Hill and subsequently the broader Australian mining community.
• The pool of experts gathered at AMDEL and the South Australian government mines department prompted Eric Rudd, together with Basil Lewis and Norman Shierlaw, to help form the Australian Mineral Foundation in Adelaide, as a focus for the Australian mining industry.
• A survey of former Radium Hill miners revealed that, by 1987, 54 had died of lung cancer. It indicated a significant increase in the risk of contracting lung cancer when compared to the general population. The results of this survey by the department of community medicine at Adelaide University and the South Australian health commission led in part to regulations for safer working conditions in uranium mines.
• Radium Hill was one of the few South Australian government projects that made a profit.
Radium Hill added to its legacy in 1981 when it became the first Australian state government-gazetted low-level radioactive waste dumpsite.