Mining Ventures Research Articles

Brazil's Uranium Mining Evolution: Domestic Developments and International Dynamics

This article provides an exploration of the historical trajectory of uranium mining in Brazil, providing insight into its emergence, development, and current status within the global nuclear landscape. From its early days, characterized by sporadic mining ventures to the establishment of strategic uranium reserves, Brazil's journey mirrors a complex interplay of domestic imperatives and international dynamics. However, despite Brazil's significant uranium resources and advances in nuclear technology, its narrative often remains overshadowed by other global nuclear actors. Thus, by delving into Brazil's historical engagement with uranium mining, this paper seeks to illuminate its evolving role and contributions to the nuclear domain. Furthermore, this study examines the impact of external influences, such as geopolitical pressures, the international price of uranium, and technological advancements, on Brazil's nuclear ambitions. Ultimately, it aims to enrich our understanding of Brazil's past, present, and future in the global nuclear area.

Perspective on Artisinal and Small-scale gold Mining: Ecological and Socio-economic Inovation

Global aspirations for stringent mercury regulations have not been translated effectively in Russia, largely due to the emergence of new domestic cinnabar mining ventures. These initiatives have increased locally sourced mercury, reducing its cost and undermining efforts to curtail its use. This study employs Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA) within an environmental finance framework to rigorously assess the challenges associated with mitigating mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in Russia. The sampling period for the research spans from June to September 2018 in the Krasnoyarsk Krai area, comprising Yeruda and Chebyzhek villages in the Kurakhinsky district and Abalatskoye village in the Minusinsky district. The paper investigated these complexities using SMAA to identify the multifaceted challenges in implementing the Minamata Agreement, a global treaty committed to regulating and curtailing mercury use. The findings revealed that mercury management is associated with various socioeconomic factors, labor relations, and power structures that have collectively hindered mercury-free practices in gold mining. Therefore, this study highlighted the critical need for a holistic, sustainable economic framework by incorporating new insights into the societal metabolic functions of dynamic mineral finance. Utilizing SMAA within the specific context of native employment conditions, the authors challenged the prevailing norms and offered robust, data-driven strategies aimed at reducing or eliminating mercury usage in ASGM.

Impact of Nominee Agreement on Mining Business Entities Against the Welfare of the People

This study delves into the regulation of foreign share ownership and the prohibition of nominee agreements in the establishment of mineral and coal mining entities in Indonesia, aiming to ensure legal certainty and promote the welfare of the people, as mandated by Article 33 paragraph (3) of the 1945 Constitution. Employing three legal theories—basic legal values (Gustav Radbruch), legal system theory (Lawrence Friedman), and the welfare state—the research method incorporates both normative juridical and empirical juridical approaches. The findings reveal that nominee agreements, though legally questionable under Article 1320 of the Civil Code, serve as a means for foreign investors to secure their interests in Indonesian mining ventures. An Environmental Analysis of Law (EAL) employing the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) method indicates a positive impact on the welfare of communities in Morowali and Kutai Kartanegara regencies due to these agreements. Proposing an ius constituent approach, the study advocates for relaxed foreign ownership regulations, allowing up to 51% ownership during the initial establishment period, accompanied by a mandatory divestment to 49% after ten years of exploration. Such a policy shift obviates the need for nominee agreements, ensuring both investment security and legal clarity. Supervisory mechanisms are recommended to oversee divestment and reinvestment processes, ensuring equitable distribution of mining dividends and bolstering legal certainty in mining operations. These proposed regulatory adjustments are envisioned to foster equitable resource management, thereby advancing the welfare of the Indonesian populace, particularly in Morowali and Kutai Kartanegara regencies.

A model for quantification of environmental risk in mining ventures

The premature termination of industrial projects, often triggered by insufficient revenue generation to cover liabilities, poses a significant challenge in project evaluation. Although the conventional discounted cash flow (DCF) method remains widely used, its inability to account for project failure probabilities can lead to resource misallocation. This study aims to address this limitation by applying real options theory to assess the risk of premature abandonment within the context of a mineral extraction project. In this proposed system, fluctuations in environmental remediation costs are modelled by considering the cumulative probabilities of cost increases or decreases at each time step. The simulated project value reflects the cumulative activities required for mine closure, where each ton of extracted ore generates an environmental liability demanding remediation. Through the application of this system, the study demonstrates its effectiveness in identifying an escalating probability of project closure over time. Particularly, the findings reveal the existence of a critical threshold date. Beyond this date, any operational suspension exceeding one year renders project closure the economically optimal choice. This closure encompasses all necessary environmental restoration activities. By integrating real options theory into project evaluation, this study offers a more comprehensive approach to assessing the risk of premature project abandonment in mineral extraction projects. Through the consideration of fluctuating environmental remediation costs and the cumulative probabilities of project closure, it provides valuable insights for decision-making in project management and resource allocation. The trigger curve generated allowed for the identification of the viability threshold of the venture. Identifying the threshold to initiate the mining closure project.

Analysis of geographically distributed ore deposit production status data

Analyzing the geographic distribution of ore deposits is crucial in understanding global resource availability, economic implications, and environmental impacts of mining activities. This article examines the distribution patterns of various ore types worldwide, highlighting their economic significance and current mining status. Utilizing tools such as Pandas for data preprocessing, Matplotlib and Seaborn for visualization, Geopandas for geographic data handling, and Scikit-learn for clustering analysis, we present a comprehensive review of ore deposits. Major ore types such as gold, copper, and iron are explored, emphasizing their industrial importance and geographic prevalence. The analysis reveals that many deposits are classified as Past Producers, indicating extensive historical mining activity. This underscores the need for efficient resource management and sustainable mining practices in the future. By understanding these distributions and statuses, stakeholders can better strategize for future mining ventures and environmental stewardship.

Herpetofauna of forest fragments within the Agata Mining Ventures Incorporated (AMVI), Agusan del Norte, Caraga Region, Philippines

The Philippines holds an extraordinary record of amphibian and reptile diversity and endemism; however, factors like habitat loss and fragmentation that may result from activities related to resource extraction, such as mining, pose a significant threat to their conservation. This study examined the herpetofauna composition in select forest fragments within one of the important mining sites in Caraga, the Agata Mining Ventures Incorporated, between 2018 and 2021. Standardized time searches along the established two 2km transects in two sampling stations (Lawigan and Tinigabasan) were conducted to record reptiles and amphibians accounting for 880 man-hours. A total of 513 individuals representing 12 species of amphibians, and 17 species of reptiles were recorded in the area in both surveys. Of these species, 62% (n = 18 spp.) are Philippine endemic, 35% (n = 10 spp.) native, and 3% (n = 1 spp.) were invasive alien species. Overall, the Shannon-Weiner diversity index is high (H’=2.52) and varied significantly across survey periods (Mann-Whitney U test = 248.5, p=0.007). The species-area relationship analysis showed a strong positive correlation for total herpetofauna (R2 = 0.98), amphibians (R2 = 0.87), and reptiles (R2 = 0.99), and a significant correlation existed between reptiles and forest area (p = 0.05). The result suggests a strong reliance of herpetofaunal richness to forested area. Combined forest clearing and the effects of mining activities currently happening in the area might threaten these environment-sensitive taxa. Preserving these forest fragments within AMVI and allocating buffer zones is highly recommended. Periodic scientific field-based surveys and re-surveys, encompassing not only amphibians and reptiles but also various other species are recommended to monitor species distributions, population trends and impacts of on-going activities. These efforts aim to update data-driven sources supporting the mining area’s rehabilitation program, thereby contributing to societal and environmental benefits.

Redhead, Paroissien, Parish & Co.: British Field Science in early Independent RÍo de la Plata

This article explores the activities of those British travellers and settlers who carried out open field research in the Andean northwest of Río de la Plata during the 1820s. The focus is set upon Doctor Joseph Redhead, who became a regional expert on questions of mountain altitudes and natural portents such as giant fossil bones and large masses of native iron. Redhead was at the centre of a network of British doctors, entrepreneurs, adventurers and civil servants who crisscrossed the territory attracted by new mining ventures and the opening of trade, and driven by the need for geographical surveys implicit in the logic of empire. James Paroissien, Woodbine Parish, Joseph Pentland and others managed to combine research on the natural environment while engaged in their commercial, diplomatic or military missions. Particular attention is paid to the interactions of Redhead and his fellow countrymen with Humboldt and the kind of science cultivated by him, as well as to issues of scientific authority at the time of deciding on the cause of unexplained natural phenomena.

Global ideals and restorative extraction: Negotiated Indigeneity on the margins of a Peruvian copper mine

AbstractThis article elucidates the unintended outcomes produced by extractive industries and Indigenous activism in eastern Apurímac, Peru. The article documents the rise and fall of an identity‐based organization in the shadow of the Bambas copper mine using the concept of emergence amid Indigenous spaces to interpret the negotiated products of ideals and realities. I show how notions of historical debt and desires for “a better life” undergird the lived experience of Cotabamban peoples, placing particular demands upon any Indigenous awakening. Over time, creative alterations to activist endeavors shift from a right to culture toward a right to action, infusing artisanal mining ventures with moral credibility. Restorative extraction becomes an Indigenous practice of redress, tackling realities of marginalization and national reciprocity that have been exacerbated by corporate development. Rather than articulating an acceptable identity, restorative extraction temporarily redeems prolonged states of exclusion pertinent for certain potentially Indigenous communities enmeshed in resource booms.

Modes of Extraction in Latin America’s Lithium Triangle: Explaining Negotiated, Unnegotiated, and Aborted Mining Projects

ABSTRACTMitigating climate change requires a global transition from fossil fuels to a “green economy” driven by renewable energies. This shift has fostered massive investments in mining resources, notably lithium in South America, needed to store renewable energies. These mining ventures often produce harmful externalities where lithium is located. In Argentina, a major producer, striking variation has occurred in the fortunes of lithium-mining projects. In some instances, mining companies offered concessions that mitigated environmental damage and improved local socioeconomic conditions. In others, companies made minimal concessions, and in a third set they halted projects in response to local resistance. Why do mining ventures result alternatively in negotiated, unnegotiated, or aborted extraction? The article proposes a new typology of modes of extraction together with a multilevel explanatory framework that centers on the strengths and strategies of transnational mining companies, subnational governments, and local communities in setting the terms for extracting lithium.

Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective

Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective

Global Territorialization and Mining Frontiers in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Capitalist Anxieties and the Circulation of Knowledge between British and Habsburgian Imperial Spaces, ca. 1820–1850

AbstractThe rumors of Brazil’s mineral riches reaching London and Vienna in the first half of the nineteenth century, started by enslaved Africans mining clandestinely in unexplored regions and later through geological surveys by mining engineers from the Habsburg Empire, prompted aspirations to wealth which circulated fluidly in the transatlantic context. This article examines the distinct but convergent agencies of garimpeiros, enslaved miners and prospectors, and of Habsburgian mining engineers in the territorialization process of Minas Gerais during the nineteenth-century expansion of global capitalism. It analyses the degree of connectivity and cooperation across British and Habsburgian imperial spaces in Brazilian mining ventures, focusing on the case of the mining engineer Virgil von Helmreichen, who arrived in Minas Gerais in 1836, under contract to the British-financed Imperial Brazilian Mining Association. The Habsburgian expert elite of which Helmreichen was a part played a crucial role in the expansion of the commodity frontier in this region, providing proficient knowledge in mining and geology. This expert community collaborated with the logistics networks of British free-trade imperialism and the Brazilian slave system inherited from the colonial period. The territorialization of Minas Gerais shows the global dynamics at play between British interests in the discovery of new mines, the need to produce expert knowledge at the local level, and the Brazilian government’s desire to control the hinterland region and profit from its mineral wealth.

Design of 3-D trajectory sequences for multiple asteroid flyby missions

Prospecting is a necessary pre-requisite of future asteroid mining ventures. It is generally assumed that inspection for the purpose of identifying the asteroid composition can be effectively accomplished from a distance through remote sensing. To be carried out in a timely and economically viable way, prospecting is best performed by devising trajectories such that a single spacecraft manages to fly by as many asteroid as possible, yet seeking to minimize a cost function that we assume to be coincident with propellant consumption. In this paper, we present a method to identify trajectory sequences to multiple asteroids. We restrict our analysis to Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs), i.e.,, those with perihelion at less than 1.3 AU from the Sun, focusing on Apollo class NEAs only. The volume of space where encounter seeking takes place is a torus-shaped 3-D region in the proximity of the ecliptic. Under the assumption of using impulsive maneuvers to connect ballistic coast arcs, we show that a deterministic building blocks approach is successful in finding a significant number of multi-flyby mission profiles with the desired characteristics. Using this scheme, it is possible to envisage realistic asteroid prospecting missions using a single launch to deploy a number of small spacecraft, with tens—or possibly hundreds—of asteroids visited in a few years.

The Mining Legacy of William S. Godbe

The Mining Legacy of William S. Godbe

Mining and urbanization:Ways of generating water insecurity in Andean territories

Mining has historically facilitated urban growth, and water access in towns and cities has become one of the most prevalent and divisive of the unresolved problems surrounding mining. Urban areas in the vicinity of large-scale mining ventures endure chronic water shortages, and these areas often turn to remote water sources to meet their needs even partially. This article investigates how urbanization processes generated by mining developments have impacted water insecurity in Andean territories. To this end, we conduct a comparative analysis of water provision via two case studies that represent different urbanization models stemming from mining in Andean territories: the concentrated model observed in the Espinar case in Peru and the scattered model witnessed in Jáchal case in Argentina. Drawing on the water security concept, which considers the ways in which water is articulated, we argue that current mining developments generate urbanization processes that, despite the different models, reinforce water insecurity through the dimensions of power, culture, and visions of development. We follow a contextualized comparative case study method. Our analysis of the case studies draws on data collected through ethnographic instruments such as in-depth and semi-structured interviews, as well as public databases.

Membrane technology for a sustainable copper mining industry: The Chilean paradigm

Mining is an economically-beneficial activity recognized as crucial in modern society since almost every aspect of our lives relies on minerals. However, intensive mining activities impose a severe strain on the water-energy nexus. In fact, mining ventures: i) need massive amount of water in various ore processing steps; ii) generate a huge amount of waste (tailings), generally transferred to tailing ponds or dams, that are a potential source of contamination and adverse ecological effects; iii) are energy-intensive practices in the extraction and transformation phases. These aspects confirm the urgent need of a paradigm shift towards a sustainable mining industry.

The belief in mining: How imageries of other mines may brighten Arctic minescapes

AbstractThe article discusses how promising outlooks and favourable memories of past and distant mining ventures are employed in the view of a minein spe. The study utilises interview quotes and written narratives pertaining to a case of mine development in Swedish Pajala and neighbouring Finnish Kolari (the Northland project 2004–2014), located above the Arctic Circle, for explicating this. Its theoretical framework includes the concept of minescape and the ideas of past presences and anticipated futures, which support capturing (the temporality of) the sociocultural and discursive dimensions of mining alongside with its physicality. Previous and distant experiences with mines appeared readily abstracted and brought into the current debate, forgetting about contexts, that is, about any historical or geographical contingencies. This kind of temporal and spatial referencing is seen to represent an imaginative practice which, as it is argued, gains an enhanced role in tandem with the increasing market dependency and volatility of the extractive business. By attending to the meaning-making based on remembering, and forgetting, in the context of experiences made with mining in the past or elsewhere, the article contributes to our understanding of the present-day role of mining heritage.

Study of Effective Environmental Engineering Impact Assessment on Coal Mining Projects

The mineral asset abuse assumes a significant function in monetary turn of events, yet it additionally causes numerous natural issues, particularly environmental issue. In coal mining, so as to accomplish feasible utilization of these assets, we should give exceptional consideration to eco-ecological insurance. This article first quickly presented the current status of natural designing effect evaluation and afterward talked about the time viability of appraisal through the investigation of its present status, utilizing ecological security check and acknowledgment in coal mining ventures. The creators consider that one-time evaluation of ecological effect on the coal tasks and "three synchronous" acknowledgment of the coal ventures executed in china as of now isn't sensible.

Floristic diversity of the biodiversity monitoring plots and its environs within Agata Mining Ventures, Inc.,Tubay, Agusan del Norte, Philippines

Woody plant species are key components of the forest ecosystem and are responsible for forest architecture and the overall composition of forest communities. On the established permanent biodiversity monitoring plots (PBMP) inside an approved mineral production sharing agreement areas in Agusan del Norte, the species diversity and abundance of trees were assessed wherein a total of 123 individuals of 16 families, 28 genera, and 37 species were recorded. Transect walks were likewise done to list existing flora within MPSA and recorded a total of 251 vascular plant species belonging to 80 families and 203 genera. The mineral lands of AMVI hold a tremendous diversity of species to include critically endangered Diospyros philippinensis and Camptostemon philippinense, among others. During re-assessment, it was observed that most of the monitoring plots progressed positively. At present, the biodiversity of these monitoring plots is under threat due to the anthropogenic and upcoming mining activities.

Review: The evolving understanding of the Great Artesian Basin (Australia), from discovery to current hydrogeological interpretations

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia underlies semi-arid and arid regions across 1.7 million km2 or one-fifth of Australia. The basin’s groundwater resources were discovered around 1880 and their development allowed pastoral activities, homestead and town water supplies, and petroleum and mining ventures to exist. The GAB is a multi-layered confined aquifer system, with aquifers in Jurassic and Cretaceous continental sandstones and intervening confining beds of siltstone and mudstone of the constituent Eromanga, Surat and Carpentaria sedimentary basins. The basin is up to 3,000 m thick and forms a large synclinal structure, uplifted and exposed along its eastern margin and tilted southwest. Recharge to the exposed aquifers occurs in the eastern margin, an area of relative high rainfall. The western margin in Australia’s arid centre receives minor recharge. Regional groundwater flow is towards the southern, south-western, western and northern margins. Flowing artesian springs discharge in the southwest margin and have produced carbonate mounds. Although lateral groundwater movement dominates, vertical upwards leakage is considered important. Potentiometric surfaces of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous aquifers are still above ground level throughout most of the basin, though pressure drawdowns of up to 100 m have been recorded in recent decades in highly developed areas, and consequently some artesian water boreholes and springs have ceased flowing. Government borehole rehabilitation programs have led to groundwater pressure recovery in some areas. This paper outlines the history of GAB exploration, scientific investigations (hydrogeology, hydrochemistry, isotope hydrology, groundwater modelling) and management, summarising the recent knowledge on the GAB.

Floristic Diversity of the Biodiversity Monitoring Plots and its Environs within Agata Mining Ventures, Inc., Tubay, Agusan del Norte, Philippines

Floristic Diversity of the Biodiversity Monitoring Plots and its Environs within Agata Mining Ventures, Inc., Tubay, Agusan del Norte, Philippines