The derailment of a train in northern Australia yesterday shows the risks of BHP Billiton Ltd.'s plan to boost volumes of uranium transported on the railway, said a network of anti-nuclear lobby groups.

BHP's plan to move uranium oxide and copper concentrate containing uranium on the line between Adelaide and Darwin raises safety concerns as the proposal involves ``a toxic, radioactive material that will be transported in high volume,'' Justin Tutty, a spokesman for the No Waste Alliance, said today. The railway has no level crossings or boom-gates, resulting in ``a number'' of collisions and derailments, he said.

Eleven carriages of a freight train traveling into Katherine in the Northern Territory left the tracks yesterday afternoon, before skidding for about 200 meters and causing a grass fire. As part of BHP's plan to expand the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia the company is seeking government approval to export copper concentrate containing uranium through Darwin using the Adelaide-Darwin railway.

``We are very concerned about this new proposed high-volume, high-risk traffic,'' Darwin-based Tutty said by telephone. ``BHP is talking about one train movement a day, up to 5,000 tons of copper concentrate.''

BHP currently exports about 1,200 tons a year of uranium oxide produced at Olympic Dam through Darwin in drums and the expansion would involve an additional 13,000 tons of uranium oxide and 1.6 million tons a year of copper concentrate, according to a BHP information sheet on the mine expansion.

Copper in Wagons

The copper concentrate would be transported in wagons rather than sealed drums, Tutty said. BHP is still studying the possible expansion of Olympic Dam, the world's biggest uranium deposit and fourth-largest copper lode.

The copper concentrate has a ``very low'' uranium content of 1,000 to 2,000 parts per million, compared to 990,000 parts per million for the uranium oxide already shipped from the port, BHP says in the information sheet. The material would still be considered radioactive, so would be transported according to the relevant regulations, it said.

Peter Ogden, a spokesman for Melbourne-based BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company, declined to comment on Tutty's concerns. Charmaine Sinclair, a spokeswoman at Freightlink, which operates the train services between Adelaide and Darwin, couldn't be reached for comment.