Thomas Conlin
The Olympic Dam mine expansion will spark earthquakes up to 6.0 in magnitude in the surrounding region US geologist Edward Cranswick says.
In an advertisement in The Advertiser today, Mr. Cranswick says mining has caused hundreds of earthquakes across Australia.
Mr. Cranswick, who worked as a geophysicist for the US Geological Survey for 22 years, said the Olympic Dam project might cause a magnitude 4.0 or 6.0 quake. That would cause damage to tailing dams and regional communities if it struck in the wrong place, he said.
"The problem about Olympic Dam is that it's the biggest engineering feat of its sort ever done, so it's going to produce the biggest stresses," he said.
A department of the Premier and Cabinet spokesman said the "redistribution of stresses" could "trigger small seismic events" but this was unlikely to lead to any impact on the community.
page 15
Adelaide Advertiser
Adelaide, South Australia
Wednesday 19 October 2011
FINAL edition
Original Article as Photo Copy (CLICK)
Associated Advertisement Photo Copies page 32
Part A (CLICK)
Part B (CLICK)
Part C (CLICK)
IMPORTANT NOTE: on the very morning this article and advertisement appeared in The Advertiser, a Richter 3.3 magnitude earthquake shook the Adelaide area at 2:22 a.m. An early edition of the same newspaper had additional information about uranium mining and its relation to earthquakes on page 33 but this was "conveniently" removed from the paper for the final edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment