There's a school of thought at BHP that the best way to fix its loss-making Olympic Dam mine is with a bulldozer.

By demolishing the old smelter, refinery, acid plant and other surface infrastructure that so often cause the inconsistency at the mine, advocates say BHP could start again by spending a few billion dollars on world-class infrastructure to allow it to capitalise on Olympic Dam's extraordinarily large copper, gold, silver and uranium resource.