Dark horses and mine decomissioning

British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium

Dark horses and mine decomissioning Wheeland, Kenneth G.

Abstract

The decommissioning of mines which generate acid drainage is an expensive and uncertain task. The national Mine Environment Neutral Drainage (MEND) program has estimated the total cost in Canada at $3-5 billion over the next two decades, and has further identified that we have a minimal amount of the technology we require to carry out the task. Appropriately, the first efforts are aimed at increasing our confidence in "conventional" approaches, by developing the necessary field data, engineering guidelines and modelling techniques. However, the costs associated with perpetual treatment of elaborate encasing systems will still be extremely high. Now it is time to give full attention to the identification, screening and pragmatic development of "unconventional" approaches. Key areas where better ideas are needed include prediction, pretreatment, passivation, placement, packaging and post-treatment.

Item Metadata

Title	Dark horses and mine decomissioning
Alternate Title	Dark horses and mine decommissioning
Creator	Wheeland, Kenneth G.
Contributor	British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium; University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering
Date Issued	1991
Description	The decommissioning of mines which generate acid drainage is an expensive and uncertain task. The national Mine Environment Neutral Drainage (MEND) program has estimated the total cost in Canada at $3-5 billion over the next two decades, and has further identified that we have a minimal amount of the technology we require to carry out the task. Appropriately, the first efforts are aimed at increasing our confidence in "conventional" approaches, by developing the necessary field data, engineering guidelines and modelling techniques. However, the costs associated with perpetual treatment of elaborate encasing systems will still be extremely high. Now it is time to give full attention to the identification, screening and pragmatic development of "unconventional" approaches. Key areas where better ideas are needed include prediction, pretreatment, passivation, placement, packaging and post-treatment.
Extent	98315 bytes
Genre	Conference Paper
Type	Text
File Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
Date Available	2009-08-27
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0042172
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12582
Affiliation	Non UBC
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Other
Copyright Holder	British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium