00:00Let's have a look at these barleys.
00:03Ryan Milgate has grown crops in Western Victoria all his life, but he believes his livelihood
00:09is now under threat because a proposed mineral sands mine near his property wants to export
00:14uranium.
00:15With a mine next door I'm just really uncertain what the future will bring and what it will
00:20look like.
00:21Astron Corporation's Rare Earth and Mineral Sands project at Donald was approved in 2008.
00:27Among the minerals being mined will be monazite and xenotime, which contain elements crucial
00:32for clean energy products like EV batteries.
00:36When those elements are extracted it leaves a concentrate containing small amounts of
00:40the radioactive elements uranium and thorium and it's this by-product that US company Energy
00:46Fuels wants to buy.
00:49It's paying Astron $183 million to export the concentrate to the US where it will extract
00:55the uranium at its White Mesa mill in Utah.
00:59And this is where it gets complicated.
01:01Mining uranium in Victoria has been banned since the 1980s, but Astron says the radioactive
01:07material is simply a by-product of the mining process and is exempt from the legislation.
01:14It's a move which has angered anti-nuclear campaigners.
01:18The Act prohibits the mining of uranium.
01:21It's got bipartisan support, it has enjoyed bipartisan support since 1983 and it should
01:27be strengthened to remove that loophole.
01:30Victoria has amongst the strongest environmental laws in the country.
01:34Astron says the estimated dose of radiation to workers and the public are well below the
01:38recommended limit, while radiation experts say it's only the leftover concentrate that's
01:43considered radioactive.
01:45The processing is done in a confined shed and bagged in confined containers that are
01:52then transported from sites and none of that is open to the environment.
01:57Ryan Milgate has been attending a series of community meetings in Minyip to raise his
02:02concerns.
02:03Everything suggests that there's no community issues around the levels of radiation involved
02:08in mining, but certainly we hope they get that right.
02:15Astron expects to begin mining at Donald in late 2025.
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