The battle to protect Kakadu national park from uranium mining has reignited with a push to overturn an 18-year-old promise to First Nations people in order to access billions of dollars of radioactive ore.
It is the resurrection of a decades-old campaign to mine Jabiluka, a proposal that was abandoned after a hard-fought campaign by the Mirarr people – traditional owners – and environmentalists. But the debate is also throwing the rehabilitation of Ranger, an open-cut uranium mine adjacent to Jabiluka imposed on the Mirarr in the 1970s, into doubt.
