Abstract
Using Murmansk Region, one of Russia’s largest mining regions, as a case study, this paper examines the environmental safety challenges arising in the storage of mining and mineral processing waste (MMPW). It was found that MMPW causes environmental damage even after the deposit’s exhaustion. While being stored, the MMPW composition experiences a major change in the process properties of the recoverable minerals. As a consequence, the potential value of the MMPW as a mineral resource falls. Imperfections of the regulatory framework, leading to a higher unit cost of recovery and a reduced profitability of MMPW processing, are demonstrated. Potential amendments to the Russian laws are proposed in order to make MMPW processing commercially more viable.
Highlights
For natural reasons, the Russian Federation controls mineral resources, unique in terms of both the reserves and diversity, and a major share of its territory is occupied by natural ecosystems
The problem is aggravated by the fact that the existing mineral reserve calculation methodology is not fully meant to take into consideration parameters such as the prospective use of anthropogenic resources, mining and mineral processing waste (MMPW) life cycle, changes in the valuable component grade, business environment, motivation behind waste processing, potential environmental and economic risks, in addition to those involved in the reserve calculation, etc. [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
We examine some environmental and business challenges of MMPW processing, both in Russia and other economies
Summary
The Russian Federation controls mineral resources, unique in terms of both the reserves and diversity, and a major share of its territory is occupied by natural ecosystems. The problem is aggravated by the fact that the existing mineral reserve calculation methodology is not fully meant to take into consideration parameters such as the prospective use of anthropogenic resources, MMPW life cycle, changes in the valuable component grade, business environment, motivation behind waste processing, potential environmental and economic risks, in addition to those involved in the reserve calculation, etc. In the Russian Federation, this problem is further complicated by the fact that the relatively low-grade mineral resources being extracted are often unconventional and contain more than one valuable component This leads to unavoidable losses of the valuable components in ore concentration processes and conversion into MMPW.
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