The NT Government has released a tender for part of the rehabilitation of the abandoned Rum Jungle uranium mine which they say will cost more than $100 million, while an estimated cost for the entire works from 2018 was $300 million, up from an estimate of $200 million four years earlier.

The expression of interest works included bulk earthworks to relocate and treat contaminated soil and rock to new storage facilities, as well as developing and maintaining access and haul roads, including culvert crossings, but does not include water treatment and the pit backfill.

In November, the Territory Government announced it had reached an agreement with the Federal Government to fund stage three of the rehabilitation but without disclosing how much money would be spent.

The former mine site, about 105km south of Darwin and 6km north of Batchelor, was opened in the 1950s, and closed in the early 1970s. Acid and metals have been leaching into parts of the nearby Finniss River ever since.

A 2018 ABC news report put the estimated rehabilitation cost at at least $300 million and reported in 2009 that the Federal Government began funding the NT Government to draw up a design for the full rehabilitation of the mine.

In 2014, the ABC reported the NT Mines and Energy Department was asking for $200 million from the Commonwealth and estimated that five million cubic metres of rock would need to be relocated or re-buried in two of the mine’s deepest pits.