Oral Presentation Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Australasia 2021

New technologies to future-proof the long-term ecological monitoring of the rehabilitated Ranger Uranium Mine (#43)

Andrew Harford 1
  1. Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Darwin, NT, Australia

For 40 years the Ranger mine has operated adjacent to the World-Heritage listed Kakadu National Park.  Rehabilitation of the mine-site has been progressing since the exhaustion of ore in Pit 3 in 2012 and the final drum of uranium was packaged in January 2021.  During these decades of operation and decommissioning, the Supervising Scientist Branch (SSB) has played a key role in providing scientific expertise to derive the site-specific environmental standards needed so that legislated Environmental Requirements are met. Much of SSB’s success has come from developing leading-edge practices and applying them within this complex ecological and regulatory context.  The focus is now to ensure these standards are met, ensuring there are no long-term impacts off-site, and that the on-site environment is rehabilitated to a standard that meets Traditional Owner expectations.  The long-term monitoring of the site will ideally be safer, faster and more user-friendly. There are promising technologies that may deliver monitoring systems that meet these requirements and SSB is focusing on the development of three key technologies, i.e.  drones, omics and Artificial Intelligence driven image analysis.  This presentation will discuss our achievements to-date and forward-vision to develop these technologies for Ranger mine, which will also benefit the advancement of environmental monitoring Australia-wide.