Australian company shelves expansion plans at uranium mine

Reports Reuters: "BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) has shelved its planned $20 billion Olympic Dam expansion in Australia and put all other approvals on hold as the world's largest miner battles escalating development costs, slumping prices and an uncertain outlook . . . Expanding Olympic Dam, the world's fourth-largest known copper deposit and largest uranium source, was one of three major projects that were due to go to the BHP board for final approval by December 2012 in an $80 billion pipeline of projects that BHP had flagged were likely to be slowed."  Olympic Dam has the largest known single deposit of uranium in the world, though uranium represents only a minority of the mine's total revenue. Activists in Australia have long been fighting to block the expansion. More.