PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has approved the environmental scoping document for the Wiluna project extension, developer Toro Energy reported on Wednesday.
Under the expansion project, Toro would integrate the Millipede and Lake Maitland deposits into its Wiluna project. The extended Wiluna project would still be based on a central processing plant, as currently approved by the government, adjacent to the Centipede/Millipede deposits.
This would reduce the regional footprint and environmental impacts by avoiding duplication of operations and infrastructure across multiple deposits.
Based on mining at the four deposits, the Wiluna project was expected to have a mine life of 16 years with average production of two-million pounds a year of uranium oxide (U3O8), for the first ten years of operation.
Total production over the life-of-mine would reach 30.2-million pounds of U3O8.
Toro MD Vanessa Guthrie said on Wednesday that the EPA approval of the environmental scoping document would allow Toro to continue with its preparations of the public environmental review (PER) - the next step in the assessment process.
“The EPA has determined that the PER should be open for public review for a 12-week period and Toro is planning to release this document by mid-2015,” Guthrie said.