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International Media Resource Articles

Is return of metal mining threat to regional economy? – by Stephen Anderson (Houghton Mining Gazette – July 26, 2013)

http://www.miningjournal.net/

HOUGHTON – A recent study, which is part of a larger local education campaign, has concluded that a return to metal ore mining and processing would damage the western Upper Peninsula’s economy.

Dr. Thomas Power of the University of Montana Economics Department, through his organization Power Consulting, Inc., recently completed his 109-page report, “The Economic Impacts of Renewed Copper Mining in the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” Power was contracted in September to do the report by Friends of the Land of Keweenaw.

The study recommends that future economic development in Baraga, Gogebic, Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties continue to focus on “economic gardening” – a term coined by the Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance describing a focus on nurturing existing businesses and supporting new start-ups – and the protection and enhancement of a “quality of life” amenity-based economy that has emerged over the last 40 years.

The report, which can be found in its entirety at folkminingeducation.info, summarized the following findings in its executive summary: There are significant costs associated with mining activities that tend to offset the positive impacts of the high pay associated with mining jobs.

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BHP and Rio fork out $3.7 billion for water in Chile – by Brian Robins (The Age – July 26, 2013)

http://www.theage.com.au/

BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are being forced to spend $US3.4 billion ($3.67 billion) on a water plant at their copper project in Chile, at a time when mining companies globally are curtailling capital spending.

The two miners will lose access to most of their water supply at the Escondida project, the world’s largest copper mine, in 2017.

BHP’s share of the new round of investment is estimated at $US1.97 billion and Rio’s at $US1.03 billion. Construction on the planned desalination plant is to start immediately, with completion planned for 2017.

The partners are in the middle of a $US4.5 billion round of spending which is to be completed next year, primarily on a new ore concentrator at the project, together with ancillary upgrades.

When completed, these upgrades will enable the production of more than 1.3 million tonnes of copper a year from 2015.
When the partners in Escondida disclosed the $US4.5 billion upgrade early last year, they signalled this was the first in a series of programs that could substantially expand capacity at the mine.

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Gold on Earth formed in collision of exotic stars – by Dan Vergan (U.S.A. Today – July 17, 2013)

http://www.usatoday.com/

There’s gold in them thar neutron stars! That’s right, astronomers claim Earth’s gold, the stuff of wedding bands and pricey speaker wires, originated in cataclysmic collisions of exotic stars. The gold glinting on your wedding band was likely born in a cataclysmic merger of two exceedingly exotic stars, astronomers report Wednesday.

Dying stars billions of years ago cooked up most of the lighter elements in the universe, the oxygen in the air and calcium of our bones, and blasted it across the cosmos in their final explosive moments. We are stardust, as the singer Joni Mitchell put it.

But some of the heaviest atoms, including gold, defied this explanation, requiring an even more exotic origin.

A team led by Harvard astronomer Edo Berger now reports that gold is likely created as an aftereffect of the collision of two “neutron” stars. Neutron stars are themselves the collapsed remains of imploded stars, incredibly dense stellar objects that weigh at least 1.4 times as much as the sun but which are thought to be less than 10 miles wide.

While ordinary stars explode about once every century in our galaxy, Berger says, explosive collisions of two neutron stars happen only about once every 10,000 years. And it appears they spew out gold and other heavy elements in the week after their merger.

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