Overview -
Owned and operated by Energy Resources of Australia Ltd., a 68.4 per cent owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Australia, the Ranger Mine is located approximately 250 kilometers east of Darwin, in Australia's Northern Territory.
The Ranger Mine was the first new mine to go ahead in the second wave of uranium mining in Australia, and it holds a significant place in the history of indigenous land rights in this country. Despite opposition, Ranger went into production in 1980. Full production was in October 1981 at a rate of about 3300 tonnes per year of uranium oxide concentrate.
Ranger achieved a second consecutive year of record production in 2005, with a total of 5,910 tonnes of uranium oxide drummed, a 15 per cent increase on 2004. Ranger is the worlds second highest uranium producer behind McArthur River, which produced 7,200 tonnes of U3O8 in 2005 and ahead of Olympic Dam which produced 3,688 tonnes in '05. Mining at Ranger is currently expected to end in 2008, and processing in 2014.
Capable of producing over 5,000 tonnes of U3O8, the mine employs over 300 permament employees as well as numerous contractors and is the dominant economic contributor to the regional economy.
