Assessment of mining activities with respect to the environmental protection

This paper deals with the impact of mining on the environment. Coal mining is still among the most widespread and most intense mining activity, which disturbs the landscape around us bringing regional environmental, economic and aesthetic problems. However, for many countries in the world, including the Czech Republic, deposits of raw materials play an important role, especially for purposes of producing electricity and thermal energy. At the same time, growing emphasis laid on the environmental protection can be observed worldwide. To meet the increasing ecological demands, it is reasonable to consider the most significant aspects of mining activities from the environmental point of view, as well as to consider the possibilities of the abandoned mines utilization as possible waste dumps. Parts of this problem consist in: the monitoring, environmental impacts assessment of exploration and mining activities and waste disposal mining, which may significantly contribute to the environmental protection in the future. Several parameters that can significantly affect the usability of the waste disposal mining, such as geological structure, hydro-geological conditions, material composition and physical and mechanical properties of rocks are discussed in detail in this work. The article also includes a practical example of Environmental Impact Assessment process for the particular activity of OKD stock company, which is the only producer of hard coal (bituminous coal) in the Czech Republic. Its coal is mined in the southern part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin - in the Ostrava-Karvina coal district. KeywordsWeb of Science221937

Sustainable seabed mining: guidelines and a new concept for Atlantis II Deep

The feasibility of exploiting seabed resources is subject to the engineering solutions, and economic prospects. Due to rising metal prices, predicted mineral scarcities and unequal allocations of resources in the world, vast research programmes on the exploration and exploitation of seabed minerals are presented in 1970s. Very few studies have been published after the 1980s, when predictions were not fulfilled. The attention grew back in the last decade with marine mineral mining being in research and commercial focus again and the first seabed mining license for massive sulphides being granted in Papua New Guinea’s Exclusive Economic Zone.Research on seabed exploitation and seabed mining is a complex transdisciplinary field that demands for further attention and development. Since the field links engineering, economics, environmental, legal and supply chain research, it demands for research from a systems point of view. This implies the application of a holistic sustainability framework of to analyse the feasibility of engineering systems. The research at hand aims to close this gap by developing such a framework and providing a review of seabed resources. Based on this review it identifies a significant potential for massive sulphides in inactive hydrothermal vents and sediments to solve global resource scarcities. The research aims to provide background on seabed exploitation and to apply a holistic systems engineering approach to develop general guidelines for sustainable seabed mining of polymetallic sulphides and a new concept and solutions for the Atlantis II Deep deposit in the Red Sea.The research methodology will start with acquiring a broader academic and industrial view on sustainable seabed mining through an online survey and expert interviews on seabed mining. In addition, the Nautilus Minerals case is reviewed for lessons learned and identification of challenges. Thereafter, a new concept for Atlantis II Deep is developed that based on a site specific assessment.The research undertaken in this study provides a new perspective regarding sustainable seabed mining. The main contributions of this research are the development of extensive guidelines for key issues in sustainable seabed mining as well as a new concept for seabed mining involving engineering systems, environmental risk mitigation, economic feasibility, logistics and legal aspects

PADAMOT : project overview report

Background and relevance to radioactive waste management International consensus confirms that placing radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuel deep underground in a geological repository is the generally preferred option for their long-term management and disposal. This strategy provides a number of advantages compared to leaving it on or near the Earth’s surface. These advantages come about because, for a well chosen site, the geosphere can provide: • a physical barrier that can negate or buffer against the effects of surface dominated natural disruptive processes such as deep weathering, glaciation, river and marine erosion or flooding, asteroid/comet impact and earthquake shaking etc. • long and slow groundwater return pathways from the facility to the biosphere along which retardation, dilution and dispersion processes may operate to reduce radionuclide concentration in the groundwater. • a stable, and benign geochemical environment to maximise the longevity of the engineered barriers such as the waste containers and backfill in the facility. • a natural radiation shield around the wastes. • a mechanically stable environment in which the facility can be constructed and will afterwards be protected. • an environment which reduces the likelihood of the repository being disturbed by inadvertent human intrusion such as land use changes, construction projects, drilling, quarrying and mining etc. • protection against the effects of deliberate human activities such as vandalism, terrorism and war etc. However, safety considerations for storing and disposing of long-lived radioactive wastes must take into account various scenarios that might affect the ability of the geosphere to provide the functionality listed above. Therefore, in order to provide confidence in the ability of a repository to perform within the deep geological setting at a particular site, a demonstration of geosphere “stability” needs to be made. Stability is defined here to be the capacity of a geological and hydrogeological system to minimise the impact of external influences on the repository environment, or at least to account for them in a manner that would allow their impacts to be evaluated and accounted for in any safety assessments. A repository should be sited where the deep geosphere is a stable host in which the engineered containment can continue to perform according to design and in which the surrounding hydrogeological, geomechanical and geochemical environment will continue to operate as a natural barrier to radionuclide movement towards the biosphere. However, over the long periods of time during which long-lived radioactive wastes will pose a hazard, environmental change at the surface has the potential to disrupt the stability of the geosphere and therefore the causes of environmental change and their potential consequences need to be evaluated. As noted above, environmental change can include processes such as deep weathering, glaciation, river and marine erosion. It can also lead to changes in groundwater boundary conditions through alternating recharge/discharge relationships. One of the key drivers for environmental change is climate variability. The question then arises, how can geosphere stability be assessed with respect to changes in climate? Key issues raised in connection with this are: • What evidence is there that 'going underground' eliminates the extreme conditions that storage on the surface would be subjected to in the long term? • How can the additional stability and safety of the deep geosphere be demonstrated with evidence from the natural system? As a corollary to this, the capacity of repository sites deep underground in stable rock masses to mitigate potential impacts of future climate change on groundwater conditions therefore needs to be tested and demonstrated. To date, generic scenarios for groundwater evolution relating to climate change are currently weakly constrained by data and process understanding. Hence, the possibility of site-specific changes of groundwater conditions in the future can only be assessed and demonstrated by studying groundwater evolution in the past. Stability of groundwater conditions in the past is an indication of future stability, though both the climatic and geological contexts must be taken into account in making such an assertion

3D modelling of geological and anthropogenic deposits at the World Heritage Site of Bryggen in Bergen, Norway

The landscape of many historic cities and the character of their shallow subsurface environments are defined by a legacy of interaction between anthropogenic and geological processes. Anthropogenic deposits and excavations result from processes ranging from archaeological activities to modern urban development. Hence, in heritage cities, any geological investigation should acknowledge the role of past and ongoing human activities, while any archaeological investigation should be conducted with geological processes in mind. In this paper it is shown that 3D geological and anthropogenic models at different scales can provide a holistic system for the management of the subsurface. It provides a framework for the integration of other spatial and processmodels to help assess the preservationpotential for buried heritage. Such an integrated framework model is thus contributing to a decision support system for sustainable urban (re)development and regeneration in cities, while preserving cultural heritage. A collaborative approach is proposed to enhance research and implementation of combined geological and archaeological modelling for sustainable land use planning and heritage preservation, using York and Bryggen as prime examples. This paper presents the status of 3D framework modelling at Bryggen in Norway as an example

Proposal of a consistent framework to integrate geothermal potential classification with energy extraction

The classification of geothermal resources is dependent on the estimate of their corresponding geothermal potential, so adopting a common assessment methodology would greatly benefit operators, investors, government regulators and consumers. Several geothermal classification schemes have been proposed, but, to date, no universally recognised standard exists. This is due to the difficulty in standardising fundamentally different geothermal source and product types. The situation is not helped by the accepted use of inconsistent jargon among the geothermal community. In fact, the term "geothermal potential" is often interpreted differently by different geothermal practitioners. This paper highlights the importance of integrating the classification of geothermal potential with that of geothermal energy extraction from well-defined development projects. A structured progression, from estimates of in situ quantities for a given prospect to actual production, is needed. Employing a unique, unambiguous framework would ensure that the same resource cannot exist simultaneously under different levels of maturity of the estimate (as in double bookings of resources), which would let stakeholders better assess the level of risk involved and the steps needed for a geothermal potential to achieve commercial extraction

Karst, GIS and geological hazard planning and management in Great Britain

The British Geological Survey (BGS) database of karst features for the United Kingdom include dolines, cave entrances, stream sinks, resurgences and building damage; data for approximately half of the country has so far been gathered. BGS makes and utilises digital geological map data, which includes lithological and stratigraphical information for bedrock and superficial deposits. By incorporating this digital map data with digital elevation slope models and karst data, BGS has generated a derived dataset assessing the likelihood of subsidence due to karst collapse. This dataset is informed and verified by the karst database and marketed as part of its GeoSure suite; the karst layer includes areas of limestone, chalk, gypsum and salt. It is currently used by environmental regulators, the insurance and construction industries plus the BGS semi-automated enquiry system. The karst database and GeoSure datasets can be combined and manipulated using GIS to make other datasets that deal with specific problems. Sustainable drainage systems, some of which use soak-aways into the ground are being encouraged in the UK, but in karst areas they can cause problems. Similarly, open loop ground source heat pumps may induce subsidence if installed in certain types of karst such as chalk with overlying sand deposits. Groundwater abstraction also has the potential to trigger subsidence in karst areas. GIS manipulation of the karst information will allow the UK to be zoned into areas suitable, or unsuitable, for such uses; it has the potential to become part of a suite of planning management tools for local and National Government to assess the long term sustainable use of the ground

Two-phased knowledge formalisation for hydrometallurgical gold ore process recommendation and validation

This paper describes an approach to externalising and formalising expert knowledge involved in the design and evaluation of hydrometallurgical process chains for gold ore treatment. The objective was to create a case-based reasoning application for recommending and validating a treatment process of gold ores. We describe a twofold approach. Formalising human expert knowledge about gold mining situations enables the retrieval of similar mining contexts and respective process chains, based on prospection data gathered from a potential gold mining site. Secondly, empirical knowledge on hydrometallurgical treatments is formalised. This enabled us to evaluate and, where needed, redesign the process chain that was recommended by the first aspect of our approach. The main problems with formalisation of knowledge in the domain of gold ore refinement are the diversity and the amount of parameters used in literature and by experts to describe a mining context. We demonstrate how similarity knowledge was used to formalise literature knowledge. The evaluation of data gathered from experiments with an initial prototype workflow recommender, Auric Adviser, provides promising results

The Assessment of Machine Learning Model Performance for Predicting Alluvial Deposits Distribution

This paper discusses the development and evaluation of distribution models for predicting alluvial mineral potential mapping. A number of existing models includes Weight of Evidence, Knowledge-driven Fuzzy, Data-driven Fuzzy, Neural-Network, Bayesian Classifier and Geostatistical Kriging. We offer classification models developed in our laboratory, where point pattern analysis was used to identify presence or absence of a known secondary alluvial (cassiterite) deposits in the Nigerian Younger Granite Region (NYGR) and the model performance assessed. We focused on the training and testing data split using longitudinal spatial data splitting (strips and halves) to ensure predictive attribute's independence. The spatial data split runs counter to the traditional random sample data selection as a procedure for checking overfitting of models mainly due to spatial data autocorrelation. Specifically, we used classification algorithms such as; Naive Bayes, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbour, Decision Tree Bagging and Discriminant Analysis algorithms for training and testing. We analysed the model's performance results using model predictive accuracy and ROC curve values in two different approaches that improve spatial data independence among predictive attributes to give a meaningful model performance

EU-Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (EU-RMCP) – Technical system specification

EU-Raw Materials Intelligence Capacity Platform (or EU-RMICP) integrates metadata on data sources related to primary and secondary mineral resources and brings the end users an expertise on the methods and tools used in mineral intelligence. The system is capable of bringing relevant user ‘answers’ of the type 'how to proceed for …' on almost any question related to mineral resources, on the whole supply chain, from prospecting to recycling, taking into account the environmental, political and social dimensions. EU-RMICP is based on an ontology of the domain of mineral resources (coupled with more generic cross-functional ontologies, relative to commodities, time and space), which represents the domain of the questions of the users (experts and non-experts). The user navigates in the ontology by using a Dynamic Graph of Decision (DDG), which allows him/her to discover the solutions which he/she is looking for without having to formulate any question. The system is coupled with a 'RDF Triple Store' (a database storing the ontologies), factSheets, doc-Sheets and flowSheets (i.e., specific formatted forms) related to methods and documentation, scenarios and metadata.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

The system of tracking the position of the bucket excavator's wheel for prevention of risk situations

For companies doing business in mining mineral deposits, ensuring safe work is one of the key tasks (Safety First!). One of the important trends in this area is prevention and endeavour to forestall risk situations. Risks need to be searched, technically described, spatially defined, evaluated and categorized by degree of risk. Complex geological and stability conditions can be one of the sources of persistent and significant risks, which are mainly landslides and rockslides threatening both mining equipment and employees. The problem described in this article and its solution concerns the Most Basin (formerly the North Bohemian Lignite Basin). This is a tertiary basin that was founded in the Oligocene. The main mineral is lignite and mining takes place on the surface. The main excavating machinery in the surface lignite quarries in Europe (Czech Republic, Germany, Poland) is the bucket wheel excavator.Web of Science15328727