8 SMe Mining engineering handbook
cement industries will become normal practice, and wet pro-
cessing will be confined to fewer operations.
Nevertheless, water may also become one of the ways
by which mining can be seen as a net contributor to the com-
munity in which it operates. It is a dichotomy that many min-
ing operations (whether they operate from the surface or from
underground) still pump millions of gallons of water out and
away from their operations every month. Therefore, the dewa-
tering of workings to allow development and mineral extrac-
tion will be seen as a positive by-product of mining and indeed
a positive legacy in those arid and semiarid parts of the world
where agriculture is an ongoing struggle against drought.
Materials’ Stewardship
The Doe Run lead operations in Missouri (United States) have
been in production in one form or another since the U.S. Civil
War. One of the interesting aspects of the current operation is
that the company has been actively practicing the notion of
commodity stewardship for more than 30 years. The company
took the long-term view that their responsibility to the United
States was to see that the nation’s needs for metallic lead were
catered for in every sense of the word. We all understand the
notion of mining, refining, and marketing raw metallic lead,
but the company also assumed the mantle of collecting and
recycling lead once the components in which it had been
employed had reached their end of life.
Doe Run set up a nationwide collection network at which
used car batteries (the major and most readily available source
of secondhand lead in the United States) could be deposited
free of charge. These batteries were then drained of their acid,
which was sold back to the industry; the plastic battery hous-
ing was likewise recycled; and the lead metal was returned to
the Doe Run processing plant where it was recycled to produce
new lead. The logic behind this strategy is that the company
knows about lead processing, it already owns the necessary
plant and equipment to recycle the metal, and as such it is an
integral part of the whole lead market.
This concept of stewardship has been used to varying
degrees within the nuclear industry, which recycles its own
products. It will only be a question of time before other metal-
lic industries take on (or are forced to practice) the notion of
commodity stewardship, which is the logical next step for-
ward in recycling.
ethics and good neighbors
In the future, mining organizations, and especially the larger
ones, will see themselves as being resource and service pro-
viders. Whether this involves power, water, forestry goods, or
the mass recycling of metals and glass, they will view their
business in a holistic way. What shareholders will make of this
arrangement has yet to be tested, but in recent years we have
seen a shift away from shareholder positions based purely
on financial returns. For example, hedge funds that invest in
enterprises based on a particular ethical position (be it green,
nonpolluting, good neighbor, anti-apartheid, or nonmilitary)
have been available for many years.
The next logical step for mining companies is to ensure
that in addition to their core business of finding, mining, and
refining minerals, they also engage in other associated activi-
ties. A mining company could, therefore, find itself farming
large tracts of land that it had reclaimed after strip mining
had passed through the area, running offshore wind farms,
or providing hydroelectric power and agricultural irrigation
services.
The fact remains that today’s society cannot exist without
mines and the products of mining. It is no good simply saying
that we will allow others to run roughshod over environmen-
tal and social issues as long as these issues do not impact us.
Alternatively, by simply outlawing the consumption of metals
and minerals, a resource-scarce global environment would be
created that would relegate large areas of the world and its
peoples to zero advancement, while ensuring that developed
countries remained on the plus side of the inequality equation.
Beyond the Pale
Many would consider that future mining trends must encom-
pass an appreciation and inclusion of two further untapped
regions that are ripe for exploration and exploitation: marine
mining and mining in space. However, neither of these fron-
tiers holds much in the way of either economical or realistic
possibility within the next hundred years.
The offshore production of sulfur from the Gulf of
Mexico using the Frasch process is one of the few marine
mining success stories. Marine mining (with the exception
of creating large, near-shore coffer dams for the exploitation
of diamonds in southwestern Africa, and the offshore extrac-
tion of sulfur) does not hold anything like the attraction that
surface mining does. Although manganese nodules and other
sea-floor mineral deposits contain huge tonnages of met-
als, they are unlikely to be mined for the foreseeable future
for political reasons. Though the technology for mining the
nodules was demonstrated in the late 1960s by the Glomar
Challenger and others, as the deposits lie in the depths of the
ocean beyond the territorial limit of any coastal nation, inter-
national agreement is required before development can occur.
The failure of the 1972 Law of the Sea conference and many
subsequent discussions have aptly demonstrated the unlikeli-
hood that seafloor mining will occur anytime soon. Indeed,
the only potential for a further advance in marine mining is
in the winning of sand and gravel for construction purposes.
Any potential for mining in space is bound to be ham-
pered by four fundamental issues:
1. Excessively high costs of transportation
2. Delivery and maintenance of mining equipment
3. Allowable processing methods and their requirements
4. Ownership of a planet or star and the willingness (or oth-
erwise) of the owner to allow mining
The only reason to mine in space would be to acquire met-
als and minerals not available on earth, but would the exces-
sive cost for such a high-risk project (in what would be, after
all, a scientific adventure) ever be justified? There is no doubt
that the major advantage that space can offer mining is as a
spinoff in technological improvements, in much the same way
that space and military technology and materials have already
provided for a plethora of other high-level industries. In the
longer term, space mining may provide raw materials for use
in space itself (water, hydrogen, metals, etc.) to overcome the
“gravity well” of Earth.
ConCluSion
Although some may believe that mining is a sunset industry
that is beginning a slow decline into oblivion, this is simply not
the case. There is no doubt that the industry is a mature one,