Resources and geology of Australia's thorium deposits

Australia's thorium resources currently amount to 452,000tonnes Th of which 364,000tonnes (80.5%) occur in heavy mineral sand deposits, 53,300tonnes (11.7%) in a vein type deposit at Nolans Bore in the Northern Territory and another 35,000tonnes (7.7%) are in an alkaline trachyte plug at Toongi in New South Wales. This distribution of thorium resources differs from the world wide distribution where 31.3% of the resources occur in carbonatites, 24.6% are in placers, 21.4% in vein type deposits and 18.4% in alkaline rocks. This variance is at least partly due to relatively more, although still inadequate, data on thorium resources being generated by the very active heavy mineral sand operations around Australia. Even where thorium analyses have been carried out for other types of deposits that host thorium, such results are not published since thorium is not considered to be economically important.


All of Australia's thorium resources occur in multi-commodity deposits, dominantly the heavy mineral sands and in rare earth deposits where the extraction cost would be shared with if not totally supported by the other commodities in the deposit. Because there has been no large-scale demand for thorium, there has been little incentive for companies to assess the cost for the extraction of thorium resources. Hence there is insufficient information to determine how much of Australia's thorium resources are economic for purposes of electricity power generation in thorium nuclear reactors.


Geoscience Australia is currently engaged in upgrading its database on thorium resources as part of the five-year Onshore Energy Security Program and Australia's figures on its thorium resources will be refined as a result of this work.


Because of limited demand, there has been very little exploration for thorium in Australia. As part of its five year Onshore Energy Security Program, Geoscience Australia is in process of upgrading its continent wide airborne radiometric coverage and is conducting a low density geochemical sampling program across the continent. These programs will help to develop a better understanding of the geological and geochemical environment of thorium in Australia and provide basic pre-competitive data to reduce risk the level of risk for the mineral exploration industry.


Assessment of thorium resources by the minerals industry in the future will depend upon the development of commercial-scale thorium nuclear reactors and the resulting demand for thorium resources.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2008-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/65656

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

Miezitis, Y.

 1
Author

Mernagh, T.P.

 2
Author

Lambert, I.B.

 3
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

  • mineral deposits

Keywords

  • AU

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-d1a6-7506-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/65656

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/a05f7892-d1a6-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-22T08:24:58
Date info (Creation)
2008-02-01T00:00:00

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

mineral deposits

Provided by

Access to the portal

Associated resources

Not available