Nabarlek rehabilitation: the supervising scientist's perspective

Nabarlek is an important milestone in the history of uranium mining in Australia representing the first of the modern day uranium mines to have gone full cycle from inception to reinstatement under a strict regime of government supervision and compliance. Consequently, there are pressures to get it right and at the same time redress the poor public image of uranium mine site rehabilitation that arose from mining activities at Rum Jungle and the South Alligator Valley in the 1960s. As stated by the Chair of the Nabarlek Minesite Technical Committee (8 September 1999), Nabarlek provides: (An) opportunity to demonstrate to the world the successful rehabilitation of a uranium mine under world's best practice methods. Also, the lessons learnt from the rehabilitation of Nabarlek will undoubtedly feed into processes elsewhere, particularly in the Alligator Rivers Region (ARR)