Olympic Dam

Olympic Dam, near Roxby Downs in South Australia's far north, is one of the world's genuinely unique orebodies - a single underground deposit holding globally significant quantities of copper, uranium, gold and silver. Discovered in 1975 and in production since 1988, it is operated by BHP and ranks as the largest known uranium deposit on the planet and among the largest copper deposits, with an integrated smelter, refinery and hydrometallurgical plant processing ore drawn from billions of tonnes of reserves. Its scale of underground workings and water use from the Great Artesian Basin make it one of the most complex mining and metallurgical operations in the Southern Hemisphere.