The health impact or effects of the proposed expansion at BHP's Olympic Dam open cut uranium mine in South Australia is explored in "A Hard Rain" by independent documentary filmmaker David Bradbury of Frontline Films, 2007. This exploration of the radiation effects of the exposure of radioactive materials in the tailings from the uranium mining is definitely filming on the frontline.

A wider selection of interviews from the documentary film can be found here.

Bradbury argues that all that glitters is not gold. Short term windfall profits for BHP Billiton and a handful of jobs if the next federal government approves the Olympic Dam expansion will reap a spiral in cancer rates and birth defects the like of which this nation has never known. When they mine uranium to extract the yellowcake, more than 80% of the radiation stays behind at the mine in the form of radioactive tailings.

Because of the sheer volume of tailings – the waste material left over after the uranium and valuable minerals are extracted - will be largely dumped on the surface at the minesite. It has been pulverized into fine dust size particles and dumped there, ready to blow in the wind or weep into the water.

Radiation travels on the wind, and the fine radioactive particles can easily blow to the dense population centres of Sydney (l300k), Melbourne (l000k) or Adelaide (522k) away from the Olympic Dam minesite