As you state no one was injured. I'm sure if there was any environmental damage to speak of you would have mentioned it, so I assume that this was non-existent or minimal too.

This is just all emotion and empty rhetoric from someone with a preconceived ideological position.

Have to agree with Stezza! Same old same old fear-mongering!?
No ivory tower dwelling, wishful thinking greenie, is saying the era of gold mining is over, yet the contaminants that regularly leach from old gold workings, or new ones, could be far more dangerous!
It's really more about rolling back progress and or industrialization?
Or not allowing the traditional land holders anything like a measure of self determination, let alone economic self sufficiency!?
Or fully informed consent?
Rhrosty.

Well, I can agree with the first two critics of this article - about one point, anyway. It is true that gold mining is also harmful to health. Coal mining even worse.

But that doesn't make uranium mining safe.

The nuclear lobby always trots out that line about "nobody killed, nobody sick" - knowing full well that the harmful after effects of exposure to ionising radiation will take perhaps decades to appear.
Very like the old arguments about smoking being OK for health. Lung cancer doesn't kill you until 20 or 30 or more years later.

well nuclear power has been around around 60 years, how many decades do you want? I suppose after 80 or 90 years of exposure you may be correct that people may start to die!

Nothing is safe, but if you want to wait until a completely safe power source is available, turn of the lights and computer and we'll let you know when the time comes. Until then pick your favourite!

http://assets2.motherboard.tv/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/d75936b917b5dbe2376ac949a9a0acf9.jpg

I disagree with all the cobberatti above. Keep Uranium in Australia's ground, until the price is made to double AND there are more efficient and safer nuclear reactors actually working - not just long term planned.

Its no use selling Uranium early and at rock-bottom prices - see these charts http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/uranium-oxide/

As Australia has the largest Uranium reserves of any country. Instead of selling now cheap and dirty we could control the world Uranium market in a couple of decades - becoming a Saudi Arabia of Uranium.

Therefore Australia's Uranium miner should close down or go slow for a few years.

Value adding a a finished ready to use product would enable us to command premium prices!
Having said that, I prefer Thorium, which we have even more of, can't be used to create weapons, and almost exactly opposite to oxide reactors, consumes up around 95% of its fuel, has very little waste, which is suitable as long life space batteries, and therefore, doesn't present with any of the usual problems that beset uranium.
The only oxide reactor we should accept, given all the advantages of cheaper than coal thorium, is the pebble reactor.
And then only where a very much hotter thorium reactor is inherently impossible, like say on ocean going vessels and submarines.
But particularly, where sheer raw speed is a critical harm avoiding necessary characteristic.
Pebble reactors are a bit more than just fanciful untried theory, [as claimed by those who just want to keep the stuff in the ground?] with a few working waterless prototypes, around the world.
Pebble reactors can be mass produced, then trucked on demand to the field, connected to the grid or local users and operating in just days?
A factor which also makes them cheaper to install, operate or decommission than current nuclear technology, or coal.
Hence the resistance/obfuscation by current conventional patent holders/manufacturers/coal miners/anti nuclear Establishment etc?
Rhrosty.

Thorium pebble bed reactors? Tried out and failed in India and South Africa. http://nuclear-news.net/2010/09/24/death-of-the-pebble-bed-nuclear-reactor/#more-10465
Thorium reactors - Westinghouse abandoning its plans there - going for lucrative nuclear decommissioning instead http://nuclear-news.net/2014/04/05/westinghouse-to-go-in-to-lucrative-nuclear-decommissioning-out-of-small-modular-reactors-smrs/
UK government chooses deep burial of nuclear wastes rather than thorium reprocessing.
Thorium nuclear reactors just not happening. Nobody wants to invest in them

Thorium nuclear reactors have all the disadvantages of uranium fuelled reactors:
A terrorist target. Spectacularly expensive. Produces wastes which can be used to make nuclear weapons. Wastes smaller in volume, but intensely radioactive and long-lasting. The reactors themselves become radioactive trash.

But the bit that amuses me is: even if Thorium reactors ever did get off the ground, would that not ruin Australia's uranium industry?

Kakadu has the Ranger uranium mine smack in the middle of it. The reason why Kakadu is now a national park and not just "crown land" is because the motley collection of "environmental" groups agreed to not protest the presence of the ranger mine if only the government would declare the area around it a national park.

Before the ink was dry on the agreement, the greenies broke their word and started crying about the uranium mine in the national park. Go and live in Tasmania Steve. You can't seem to understand the connection between mining, industry and Australia's prosperity. If you want to live in a land where everybody is either working for the government, or is a client of the government, Tassie is for you.

It is just that we who live in the productive states where enterprise and development drive our economy are getting fed up of subsidising people like you. Perhaps Tasmania and South Australia could secede from the federation and you can all go and live as peasants in environmentally pure poverty while we get on with the job of building a prosperous nation that everybody in the world wants to live in.

The problem for you then, as with all government subsidised bankrupt societies that hate mines, dams, power stations and forestry industries, will be how are you going to keep your kids from fleeing poverty and going to live in the prosperous states? It's OK to be a reactionary who hates the means of production when you are young and mummy and daddy are paying the bills. But that can only last one generation before your own kids begin to realise that your backward thinking is not getting them anywhere and a generation gap ensues.