A Brisbane-based company has not ruled out exploring for and mining uranium at a site south of Cobar.
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Hartz Rare Earths was one of six companies the NSW government invited to apply for a uranium exploration licence last week, along with Alkane Resources, which has operations around Dubbo.
While Alkane Resources CEO Ian Chalmers told the Daily Liberal the company was not interested in mining uranium and had lodged the expression of interest to protect its own interest in the Dubbo Zirconia Project, Hartz Rare Earths was a company focused on exploring for uranium and rare earths.
General manager of parent company DGR Global Limited, Greg Runge, said Hartz Rare Earths originally submitted tenders to explore areas of NSW almost two years ago, which were re-confirmed with the NSW Government in January this year.
"We didn't hear anything, so we just assumed we hadn't been successful, then this came out of the blue a few days ago," he said.
Mr Runge said the company would review historical data before deciding whether to accept a priority offer to proceed with one or more of the applications it had applied for. One was 130km south of Cobar, he said, and the other two were near Broken Hill.
"When we first submitted the application it was on the basis of the uranium price, then the uranium price fell, it has been quite low," he said. "But the market is turning around. At the end of the Cold War there were a lot of radioactive materials available as weaponry was decommissioned and we think prices will firm because all that surplus material that was around has now been consumed.
"When people think of uranium they often think of atomic bombs and the very early types of power plants and Chernobyl but they don't realise how much the technology has advanced and the bottom line is it's the cleanest form of electricity generation."
When it came to what the company would do with any uranium it mined, Mr Runge said it was too early to say.
"One positive, however, is that when the Prime Minister was in India a few weeks ago he signed an agreement to allow uranium concentrates to be exported there," he said.
But it was early days and it could be years before exploration, let alone mining, took place, Mr Runge said. "Our geologist researched the historic data available on open file, there's been no specific exploration and what's available is what was noted when people were out looking for other things, because there was no incentive for people to explore because you weren't allowed to mine in NSW," he said.
"It's one thing to find high grade ore but another if there's not much there.
"Even if you do find something often it's too small. In fact, 99 out of 100 exploration permits you walk away from.
"At the same time we were applying in NSW we were applying in Queensland, where we've just got some tenements granted and we are planning exploration."