Uranium in the Frome Embayment: Recent results from Geoscience Australia's Onshore Energy Security Program

Australian Phanerozoic basins have been under-explored for uranium. As a result, Geoscience Australia has been conducting research into uranium systems in the Frome Embayment, with the aim of developing a series of models and exploration techniques to assist uranium exploration in other basins.


The transport and depositional mechanisms are relatively well understood for sandstone-hosted uranium deposits; uranium is transported by oxidised meteoric fluids and precipitated by either an in situ reductant or by mixing with a reduced fluid. Using the concept that an oxidised fluid will progressively oxidise the rock that it passes through and, in turn the fluid will be reduced by wall rock interactions, potentially we can use drillhole logs to identify and map the redox state of the rocks and hence identify depositional sites.


A pilot study was undertaken to determine whether the open file geological logs could be used to map the redox state. A list of oxidised and reduced keywords was identified from the logs. Logs were digitised and oxidised words were given a value of one and reduced words given a value of negative one. Where there was combination of oxidised and reduced words, zero was used to designate the intermediate redox state. Where redox state could not be determined from the logs, a null data value was used. The redox values were imported into gOcad and gridded using DSI and IDW for comparison purposes.


The technique identified north-south trending features in the Namba Formation interpreted to be previously unmapped paleochannels. This technique of mapping redox conditions of sediments using open file drilling reports is able to be applied in other basin settings, assisting in the targeting of sandstone-hosted uranium systems.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2010-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/71025

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

van der Wielen, S.E.

 1
Author

Britt, A.

 2
Author

Bastrakov, E.N.

 3
Author

Cross, A.

 4
Author

Jaireth, S.

 5
Author

Le Gleuher, M.

 6
Author

Schofield, A.

 7
Author

Skirrow, R.G.

 8
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Custodian

MNHD
Owner

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Custodian

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

N
S
E
W


Maintenance and update frequency
Unknown

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Protocol

FILE:DATA-DIRECTORY

Name of the resource

Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Description

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

Keywords

  • PowerPoint

Theme

  • 3D model

  • depositional mechanisms

  • geoscience

Keywords

  • AU-SA

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

  • Earth Sciences

Keywords

  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
License

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
OnLine resource

Download the file (pdf)

Download the file (pdf)

Distribution format

  • pdf

Resource lineage

Statement

Unknown

Hierarchy level
Non geographic dataset
Other

PowerPoint

Description

Source data not available.

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/a05f7892-f9d6-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

nonGeographicDataset

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/71025

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/a05f7892-f9d6-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-20T06:16:36
Date info (Creation)
2010-09-17T00:00:00

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

3D model depositional mechanisms geoscience

Provided by

Access to the portal

Associated resources

Not available