Uranium Mine Site Visit 2026

Over the days of 6th and 7th of July 2026, a group of students studying the Nuclear Engineering minor and Master’s programs, including Dr Jennifer Stansby and Mathew Brand as accompanying staff, were able to visit the Boss Energy Honeymoon Uranium Mine site. From the NUSOC team, our President Matthew Griffiths and Marketing Executive Kara Lotter were able to join the site tour and will give their accounts of the overall experience.

Where in the World is Honeymoon?

Tucked away in the outback of South Australia, roughly 75km from Broken Hill, the Honeymoon Uranium Mine sits on the traditional lands of the Ngadjuri, Adnyamathanha and Wilyakali peoples.

Branded as "Australia's Newest Uranium Producer," Boss Energy (ASX: BOE) restarted the Honeymoon operation after acquiring it from Uranium One, and has since implemented a raft of technical upgrades that have transformed the site's efficiency, safety and environmental performance - more on that below.

Two Days, Three Wellfields, One Very Long Drive

The itinerary was as action-packed as you'd expect for a site this remote:

Day 1 began with a flight into Broken Hill, lunch at the local pub, and a scenic (if long) drive out to Honeymoon itself. On arrival, the group underwent a full visitor induction before heading straight into a plant tour covering the PLS/BLS ponds, the ion exchange towers, precipitation and thickening circuits, the centrifuge, and the drying and packing area - essentially walking the entire production flowsheet from raw groundwater to finished product in a single afternoon.

Day 2 shifted focus to the wellfields, with an early start and a tour of the East Kalkaroo, Honeymoon and Water Treatment Plant areas, followed by a drilling and logging tour of the B9 production drilling activities. After lunch back at the Honeymoon Mess, it was the long drive back to Broken Hill and a flight home to Sydney.

Safety First: Life in a Radiation-Controlled Environment

Before anyone set foot near the process plant, the group completed a full site safety induction. Honeymoon is split into three operational areas - the Process Plant, the Wellfields, and the Administration & Camp precinct - with radiation protection requirements applying across the entire process plant, wellfield and secured/supervised zones.

Visitors were required to wear minimum PPE at all times in these areas: long-sleeved shirts, long trousers, enclosed shoes, a hard hat, high-visibility vest and safety glasses. On exiting any supervised area, everyone passed through self-contamination scanners and washed their hands before eating, drinking or smoking - standard practice on a uranium site, but a genuinely novel experience for most students. A qualified medical and emergency officer is on site 24/7, and clearly marked emergency assembly points are dotted across the plant, wellfields, administration area and accommodation camp in case the evacuation siren ever sounds.

How Does In-Situ Recovery Actually Work?

For anyone picturing a conventional open pit or underground mine, Honeymoon will come as a surprise - there's no ore hauled to the surface at all. Instead, Boss Energy uses In-Situ Recovery (ISR), a technique that dissolves uranium out of the host sandstone hundreds of metres underground and pumps the resulting solution to the surface for processing.

It works like this:

1. Wellfield Leaching: A leaching lixiviant made of sulphuric acid, hydrogen peroxide (an oxidant) and ferric sulphate is injected down a series of injector wells into the uranium-bearing sand aquifer, roughly 70-120 metres below the surface, sitting within the Eyre Formation beneath the Namba Formation and above the Wilyama Basement. This solution converts the solid uranium oxides in the ore into soluble uranyl sulphates. Extractor wells then pump the resulting "Pregnant Leach Solution" (PLS), carrying 50–100 mg/L of U₃O₈, back up to surface.

2. Ion Exchange (IX): At surface, the PLS passes through NIMCIX continuous ion exchange columns, where synthetic resin beads selectively adsorb the uranium out of solution. The loaded resin is then stripped (eluted) using a saline solution, producing a much more concentrated eluate - jumping from around 50–100 mg/L up to over 10,000 mg/L U₃O₈ - while the depleted "Barren Leach Solution" (BLS, <4 mg/L U₃O₈) is recirculated back down the injection wells to keep leaching more ore.

3. Precipitation: The concentrated eluate is acidified and dosed with hydrogen peroxide, precipitating the uranium out of solution as a solid. Honeymoon's peroxide precipitation route produces a very pure product called uranyl peroxide, better known by its industry nickname: yellowcake.

4. Drying and Calcination: The yellowcake slurry is washed and dewatered through centrifuges, then calcined in electric kilns, converting it into U₃O₈ - or "blackcake" - a stable, ~98% pure final product.

5. Drumming, Packing and Logistics: The finished U₃O₈ is packed into steel drums, loaded into shipping containers, and road-freighted from Honeymoon to conversion facilities for the next stage of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Because everything happens underground and the process water is treated and recirculated in a closed loop, ISR has a dramatically smaller physical and environmental footprint than conventional mining - no tailings dams, no waste rock dumps, and comparatively little surface disturbance beyond the wellhouses and process plant itself.

Not All Wellfields Are Created Equal

Honeymoon isn't a single deposit - the broader project encompasses three wellfields: Honeymoon (36 Mlbs at 660ppm), Jason's (11 Mlbs at 790ppm) and Gould's Dam (25 Mlbs at 510ppm), spread across a resource area roughly 75km wide. Within the currently producing Honeymoon field, individual wellfields (labelled B1 through B9) are developed sequentially, each following a five-step lifecycle: resource delineation drilling (using downhole probes like Prompt Fission Neutron and Borehole Magnetic Resonance tools to directly and indirectly measure uranium and porosity), wellfield design (a five-spot pattern of extraction and injection wells), drilling and installation, construction and commissioning, and finally flushing and conditioning - a process that, end-to-end, takes the better part of six to nine months before a wellfield reaches production.

Students also got a look at some of the operational improvements Boss Energy has driven since taking over from the previous operator, Uranium One - including higher-iron, lower-pH lixiviant chemistry for improved leaching efficiency, the switch to NIMCIX in place of solvent extraction (eliminating a historical organic contamination risk), and a move from vacuum drying to calcination for a higher-density, higher-purity final product.

Reflections from the Site

Kara Lotter: 

This was an amazing experience - I'd never set foot on a mine site before, let alone a uranium mine site, so it was a fantastic introduction. The ion exchange and precipitation stages were the ones I found most interesting, as I had never encountered this specific process before. As a chemical engineering undergraduate, I was genuinely surprised by how much of the flowsheet I could follow, from the NIMCIX columns stripping uranium onto resin, through to the peroxide precipitation step that produces the yellowcake - it was rewarding to see the content I’ve been learning in class translated into real-world production cycles.

The Honeymoon site was also a real eye-opener into the sustainable side of mining. Seeing the in-situ leach (ISL) process up close made it clear just how much smaller a footprint this method leaves compared to traditional open-pit or underground mining - there's no ore hauled to the surface and no tailings dam, since the uranium is dissolved and recovered entirely underground before being pumped up as a solution. It gave me a much better appreciation for why ISL is considered a more environmentally sound and cost-effective approach, while still delivering strong production outcomes.

On the personal side, the living arrangements were more comfortable than I expected - I was one of the lucky ones with an ensuite - and getting even a small taste of the FIFO lifestyle. At the same time, we were out there, a highlight in itself. It's honestly shifted my thinking towards pursuing internships at Honeymoon or similar sites down the track. Overall, it was a brilliant experience that gave me a firsthand look at how sites like Honeymoon can extract uranium safely, sustainably, and productively, all at once.

Matthew Griffiths:

Touring Australia’s nuclear industry firsthand was an unforgettable experience which has further developed my love for engineering, and the career options available to myself and other students within the Nuclear sector. Being my first visit to an ISR mine site and my first experience of the Nuclear fuel cycle, I was amazed by the nature of work done at the Honeymoon site by Boss Energy, and how it compared to what I perceived Uranium mining was like.

My first observation was the ISR extraction method; observing the wells and fluid systems of the facility was something I had never considered as a method of mining an ore. This provided me with an amazing insight into how uranium mining is done within the guides of the safety instilled within the Nuclear sector, and how ISR minimises impact to the environment, and production of radioactive waste and dust. 

A significant part of the tour for me was the tour of the processing side of the facility, something I did not know occurred on site. Having heard about the production process of enriched uranium and terms such as yellowcake and blackcake, it was a significant experience to witness the transformation process of the uranium from a PLS liquid to the final blackcake in person. Key to this was climbing the NIMCIX ion-exchange columns and observing the counter flow resin process occurring through portholes. The most amazing aspect of the tour however was seeing the precipitation tanks and standing atop yellowcake thickening. This direct observation of prominent parts of the Uranium fuel cycle was a moment I will never be able to forget.

Atop the tour, being able to speak to the engineers maintaining and managing the operations of the site was an eye opening experience to the role of engineers in FIFO mining operations, and how I could contribute to the fuel cycle as an engineer within my career. 

This experience solidified my commitment to the Nuclear engineering minor at UNSW. It also displayed the prominent industry available for nuclear engineering in Australia, and the roles and responsibilities of those involved. This tour therefore realised my love for Nuclear, and affirmed my desire to pursue a future within the Nuclear sector.  

Why This Matters for Nuclear Engineering Students

For a cohort studying the fundamentals of the nuclear fuel cycle in lecture theatres, there's no substitute for standing on a wellhead pad in the middle of the South Australian outback and watching pregnant leach solution flow into an ion exchange column. The Honeymoon visit gave NUSOC members a rare, hands-on look at the very first link in the fuel cycle chain - from ore in the ground to drummed yellowcake ready for conversion - and a first-hand appreciation of just how tightly radiation protection, environmental management and process chemistry are woven together on a modern ISR operation.

A huge thank you to Boss Energy for hosting the group, to Dr Jennifer Stansby and Mathew Brand for organising and accompanying the trip, and to everyone who braved the early flights and long outback drives to make it happen.