China copper smelters bracing for shortage of vital scrap metal
Around 30% of China’s refined copper production used scrap metal as a feedstock in 2023.
BHP’s $30-billion expansion of its Olympic Dam copper, uranium and gold mine could be in doubt as a result of the nuclear emergency unfolding in Japan, Barry Fitzgerald writes in The Sydney Morning Herald. With uranium stocks plunging over the last two days, BHP will have to factor in the outlook for a stable uranium outlook when determining the future of the project, which is the world’s largest uranium deposit.
The ability of the world’s nuclear industry to soak up the massive increase in the supply of uranium that would come with an expansion of Olympic Dam is suddenly open to question.
Annual capacity at Olympic Dam is now rated at 235,000 tonnes of copper, 4500 tonnes of uranium and 100,000 ounces of gold. Fully expanded, that capacity rises to 750,000 tonnes of copper, 19,000 tonnes of uranium and 800,000 ounces of gold.
The planned increase in uranium output represents 20 per cent of present world production.
At today’s prices, total uranium output at Olympic Dam would account for about 25 percent of its revenues. And because of Olympic Dam’s mineralization, uranium has to be produced (separated from the copper). It is not a case of simply leaving it behind, even if copper prices are such that Olympic Dam would be a big money-spinner on copper alone.
