Environment groups and the Greens have condemned the federal government's approval of Western Australia's first uranium mine.
Toro Energy was given final environmental approval on Tuesday and is now able to push ahead with its plans to establish the state's first uranium mine, to be sited outside Wiluna.
The Wiluna Shire has welcomed the news and Indigenous native title claimants say cultural sites must be protected or they will ask for the mine to be shut down.
Ryan Emery reports from Perth.
One of the first things Western Australia's Liberal government did when elected in 2008 was to overturn the previous Labor government's ban on uranium mining.
It didn't exactly open the floodgates to uranium miners, but it did attract some interest.
BHP Billiton looked likely to have the state's biggest mine and was in the best position, with a mining lease already in place.
But last year it sold the Yeelirrie deposit and got out of yellowcake mining, in Western Australia at least.
It now looks likely that Toro Energy will be the first to open a uranium mine after it received final environmental approval from the Federal Government (Tue).
Toro Energy Managing Director Vanessa Guthrie says the company had to be meticulous in its proposal.
"It would be fair to say that, both at a state and federal level, governments took a more careful and more cautious and perhaps more rigorous approach to uranium partly because it is the first time it's been done in Western Australia, but also because of the community's expectation. There are different aspects to a uranium mine than you might see in other normal base metal or precious metal mines."
The mine is to be an open-cut strip mine using alkalines to extract the uranium oxide from the ore body.
The leftover waste - the tailings - will be sealed in clay pits, covered over and the land rehabilitated.
The refined ore will be sealed in metal drums, individually tagged, put in sealed containers and trucked to Port Adelaide to be exported overseas.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says it's not good enough.
"Uranium tailings are radioactive. They're carcinogenic and once that's in the environment, you can't clean it up. So what we know from uranium mining experiences in the past, particularly in the Northern Territory, is that the Australian taxpayer is still paying for the remediation of mines that we worked in the 1950s and '60s in the Northern Territory. So this is the kind of open-ended liability that Toro is proposing to leave West Australian taxpayers with. It's an environmental, public health and economic nightmare for West Australians and we will continue to challenge and contest it."
Toro Energy's Vanessa Guthrie says the land is already radioactive because of the ore body.
And she disputes the Greens' claim that the deposits are in a dry lake bed, saying the site is adjacent to the lake bed.
"We've considered very carefully a number of those environmental factors, in particular that the deposit occurs very shallow to the surface. So mine pits will only be 10 to 15 metres deep and what we will do is remove the ore and then place the tailings back in the mined-out void in lined lime tailing cells basically so that at the end of the mine life we will progressively rehabilitate the land surface during the mining operation. So the end of mine life the land form is basically as it was before we began mining. That is particularly consistent with the Traditional Owners' wishes in the region."
Senior Martu lawman Darren Farmer says Toro has done a better job of negotiating with the Native Title claimants than other potential uranium miners in the past.
He says Traditional Owners are looking forward to the economic benefits, but want the company to agree that if cultural sites and the environment are not properly protected, they'll shut the mine down.
"If the other senior elders might see that the company might not be doing things the way they should be or following best practice approach and that, we want to be able to not only continue to monitor that, but have a big involvement in both monitoring and checking and seeing how things are progressing in a way that if for some reason the mob thinks that the company might be for some reason stepping out of line, or whatever, then we want to be able to put a stop to it in whatever shape or form we can, you know?"
The Shire of Wiluna has welcomed the mine and its associated economic benefits, although it was cautious about having a uranium mine on its doorstep.
Shire President Graham Harris.
"Yeah, I think the rub-off effect is always what you're looking for as well and they're also talking about some training for the local Indigenous [people], which would be great, and also local people to train them up in that sort of field. It's always been a contentious sort of thing, uranium, but I think as people get to understand it a bit more, one of the other councillors and myself, a few years ago, we went over to Olympic Dam and had a good look around there and we had a chance to meet people and have a talk to them and that was very interesting. So I think that gave us a good grounding for where we are right now."
Vanessa Guthrie outlines Toro's plans for the workforce.
"We anticipate 350 people in construction, in the construction workforce, and 170 in operations and the commitment we have given to the local community is that we will have a combination of local residential workforce and a fly in/fly out workforce from Perth. And that local residential workforce, we would hope to employ as many Aboriginal people as we possibly can. Putting a direct number on that is a little difficult at the moment because we have not yet built up the operations team skill-set that we require, but we will certainly be looking to build as much employment in the town, the shire, as possible."
But Greens Senator Scott Ludlam is also critical of the economic sense behind the project.
He says Western Europe is turning its back on nuclear energy and BHP Billiton sold its Yeelirrie deposit for a reason.
"The number of nuclear reactors stalled as long ago as the 1980s and since then the industry has actually been in decline. Peak nuclear, in terms of the number of plants in operation, is actually the year 1992 and since then the industry has been going backwards, both in terms of absolute numbers of reactors, but also in terms of global share of electricity production. The industry is going backwards and it was in serious trouble even before the disaster that shattered four nuclear power plants in Fukushima in Japan."
Vanessa Guthrie is pointing towards Asia saying China, Japan and India are potential customers for uranium, and nuclear power generation is, and will be, on the rise in those countries.
"The Chinese government, the People's Republic Government, announced at the start of this year as well that they are currently increasing their nuclear capacity from its current level of about 14 gigawatts to 70 gigawatts by 2020 and they have around 30 reactors currently under construction, let alone [those that are] planned."
Whatever the outcome of the mine, it is sure to meet resistance along the way.
The Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia plans to hike from Wiluna to Leonora 300 kilometres south in protest.
Marcus Atkinson from the Alliance says between 50 to 60 people will hike, including activists from overseas.
"The only thing uranium is good for is nuclear power or nuclear weapons and that's the end of the story with that. And we've seen at Fukushima what can happen, at Chernobyl what can happen, we've seen with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and does Australia really want to play a role in this industry?"
