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After subway e-bike blaze, Toronto fire chief shares tips to avoid battery fires (CBC News Toronto – January 2, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/

Lithium ion battery fires increased nearly 90% in 2023: Toronto Fire

Toronto’s fire chief is sharing safety tips to avoid fires sparked by lithium ion batteries after a subway train was evacuated when an e-bike caught fire on Sunday.

A man suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the fire at Sheppard-Yonge subway station around 3 p.m. Sunday, which filled several subway cars with smoke. No one else was injured and trains were moving through the station again about an hour later.

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Why India Is Buying 5 Argentine Lithium Mines – by Nitin Kumar (Rediff.com – January 2, 2024)

https://m.rediff.com/

India is close to striking a deal to acquire five lithium blocks for exploration and development in Argentina with the negotiations entering “final stages”, a senior official said, even as the country is engaged in talks with other nations rich in critical minerals.

The agreement will be signed between the Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL) — a joint venture company focused on identifying, acquiring, developing, processing and making commercial use of strategic minerals in overseas locations for supply in India — and Catamarca Minera Y Energética Sociedad Del Estado (CAMYEN), a State-owned mining and energy company in the Argentine province of Catamarca.

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How reconciliation is tied up in the Ring of Fire – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – December 31, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In remote Ontario, Marten Falls First Nation hopes to move past more than 100 years of subjugation, as it opens the door to critical minerals development and an all-season road that will change their lives

As crazy hectic as your life may be, it likely doesn’t hold a candle to that of Bruce Achneepineskum. He is chief of Marten Falls First Nation, an extremely remote Anishinaabe community on the banks of the Albany River in Ontario’s far north, about 400 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. As chief, Mr. Achneepineskum wears many hats. He oversees his council. He’s a mentor, a spiritual figure, an artist and a fire marshal. He’s a father of two grown children from his first wife, and of a 17-month-old boy with his current partner.

The needs in Marten Falls are immediate and stark. There is a severe shortage of homes. A boil-water advisory has been in place for 18 years. There are endemic social problems that never seem to go away – youth suicide, alcoholism and opioid addiction.

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Why Every Western Automaker Is Visiting This Remote Part of South Africa – by Alexandra Wexler (Wall Stret Journal/MSN.com – December 29, 2023)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/

MBOMBELA, South Africa—A half-century-old company on the outskirts of South Africa’s Kruger National Park has found itself in a fortuitous spot as Western automakers push to move their electric-vehicle supply chains away from China.

Manganese Metal Co., based in the sleepy town of Mbombela, is the largest of just a handful of refiners of battery-grade manganese located outside China. Used mostly for making steel, manganese is increasingly replacing more expensive and harder-to-source minerals such as cobalt and nickel in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars, smartphones and laptops.

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No takers for long-lost gold in sunken ship found off of B.C. coast – by David Carrigg (Vancouver Sun – January 1, 2024)

https://vancouversun.com/

An estimated $11 million worth of gold bullion and dust is believed to have gone down with the SS Pacific in the Salish Sea in 1875.

No one has laid claim to any of the 4,000 ounces of gold believed to be on board a ship that sank off of the B.C. coast in 1875.

According to Matt McCauley, spokesman for the Northwest Shipwreck Alliance, there were no supported claims made by the descendants of any of the passengers or crew of the SS Pacific that sank on Nov. 4, 1875, carrying at least 275 souls, including crew, paying passengers and children. Only two survived.

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Justin Trudeau’s naive EV plan hands the keys to China – by Kelly McParland (National Post – December 29, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

Flooding the world with electric vehicles that Beijing manufactures using power produced by burning coal hardly helps to fight climate change

First off, let’s be clear that I have nothing against electric vehicles. Never mind saving the planet, who wants to pull up to a grimy gas pump on a howling winter day and risk hypothermia for the privilege of paying whatever ransom oil companies are demanding for another tankful of “dirty” fuel?

So fine, electricity is good. But let’s be serious. Canada is just the latest country to set a firm date for the future to arrive. In our case it’s 2035, when gas guzzlers are out. No high-test for you! It will be a new dawn, an electric vehicle (EV) world. Ready or not, here we come.

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Site for Canada’s underground nuclear waste repository to be selected next year – by Allison Jones (Canadian Press/Toronto Star – December 27, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

Key milestone upcoming for Canada’s nuclear waste

A critical milestone is on the horizon for Canada’s 175-year-long plan to bury its nuclear waste underground, with two pairs of Ontario communities set to decide if they would be willing hosts.

Late next year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization plans to select the site for Canada’s deep geological repository, where millions of bundles of used nuclear fuel will be placed in a network of rooms connected by cavernous tunnels, as deep below the Earth’s surface as the CN Tower is tall — if the process goes according to plan.

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Hunger for gold means the Amazon has reached ‘tipping point’ of mercury contamination from illegal mining – by Maya Fernandez (CBC News World – December 28, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/

Illegal gold mining in the Amazon has intensified, with one expert calling it a ‘transnational crime’

The rising value of gold worldwide has amplified illegal mining in the Amazon, where liquid mercury is being dumped in the Amazon River and causing scientists to warn that Indigenous communities and the environment could pay a far greater price.

Three weeks ago, Colombia, Brazil and the United States partnered up to destroy 19 illegal gold mining dredges in the Amazon Rainforest. According to Reuters, the dredges were producing about $1.9 million Cdn in gold.

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Aboriginal oilman aims to take lead on resource development: ‘We cannot live in soft communism’ – by Donna Kennedy-Glans (National Post – December 31, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

‘We’re better partners than we are fighting in the courts,’ says Albertan Stephen Buffalo, CEO of the Indian Resource Council

Growing up on Canada’s richest First Nations reserve was a tough lesson for Stephen Buffalo. Despite hundreds of millions of petro-dollars gushing into his hometown, Hobbema (as the central Alberta community was called at the time), grifters and misery made the place a hellhole.

And if this sounds like the Hollywood film Killers of the Flower Moon, a non-fiction drama about the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma after oil was discovered on their reserve, Stephen Buffalo, now 51, agrees the movie triggered not-so-pleasant memories.

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Bio-mining company to begin testing Sudbury mine waste – by Staff (Elliot Lake Today – December 28, 2023)

https://www.elliotlaketoday.com/

BacTech Environmental to run six-month pilot plant of its bioleaching mineral extraction technology

Testing of an innovative ‘green’ mining technology to extract valuable metals out of mine waste will start in Sudbury in early 2024. BacTech Environmental has a proprietary and environmentally friendly bioleaching process that it wants to test on mine tailings to extract small amounts of cobalt and nickel while it simultaneously cleans up the environment.

The bioleaching process involves using native and naturally occurring and harmless bacteria that can be trained in the lab to target certain ores and contain other substances that are harmful to humans.

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Perfection in Practice: How Do Emerald Enhancements Work? – by Richa Goyal Sikri (Rapaport Magazine – December 5, 2023)

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Keeping the green clean: Treating this precious stone is common in the industry. Five experts offer some clarity on the process.

Rubies, sapphires and emeralds form the most valuable trifecta in the colored-gem universe. But unlike the first two, which measure 9 on the Mohs hardness scale, emeralds rank at 7.5 to 8 and therefore require more care in handling. Due to various formation and extraction factors, it is natural for an emerald to contain fissures and fractures, which is why eye-visible inclusions are more acceptable in an emerald.

Global wealth expansion and the increased awareness and appreciation for emeralds have increased demand for top-notch stones in the face of limited supply. At the same time, connoisseurs of top-grade emeralds are developing less tolerance for inclusions, seeking an unnatural perfection from a natural gem. The result is that miners, lapidaries and merchants have increasingly been using clarity enhancement to meet the burgeoning demand.

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The Majestic Marble Quarries of Northern Italy – by Luca Locatelli and Sam Anderson (New York Times – July 26, 2017)

 

Business Insider Video – June 25, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/

Fueled by insatiable demand in the gulf states, the Italian marble trade is booming. A look at how the stone is wrenched from the earth.

The story of Italian marble is the story of difficult motion: violent, geological, haunted by failure and ruin and lost fortunes, marred by severed fingers, crushed dreams, crushed men. Rarely has a material so inclined to stay put been wrenched so insistently out of place and carried so far from its source; every centimeter of its movement has had to be earned.

“There is no avoiding the tyranny of weight,” the art historian William E. Wallace once put it. He was discussing the challenge, in Renaissance Italy, of installing Michelangelo’s roughly 17,000-pound statue of the biblical David.

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Ruthless, reckless, damaging: the Hon. Steven Guilbeault is MLI’s Policy-maker of the year – by Heather Exner-Pirot (MacDonald Laurier Institute – December 21, 2023)

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Guilbeault has treated the fact that Canada is a democracy, a market economy, and a federation as inconveniences to be overcome.

The Liberals have been chided for focusing on communications over substance, for announcing policies rather than implementing them. But there is an exception to this rule: the ruthlessly efficient Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. No one else in Canada has been as influential, and, in my view, no one else has done so much damage.

From an emissions cap to toxic plastic straws, and from Clean Electricity Regulations to the Clean Fuel Standard, Guilbeault has been advancing economy-killing and constitution-defying laws at a frenzied pace. He was appointed Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada in October 2021.

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A New Dawn for the Botswana Diamond Industry – by Avi Krawitz (Rapaport Magazine – December 21, 2023)

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The country is at a pivotal point in its diamond journey, with the new deal between De Beers and the government seen as a catalyst for growth.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi paused for a moment after stepping up to the podium to address the annual Natural Diamond Summit in Gaborone.

As he looked through the marquee venue, aptly known as the Diamond Dome, with its intentionally earthy décor, Masisi appeared measured. The speech he was about to give was his first major address to a broader De Beers-organized audience since the government announced its landmark deal with the company on June 30.

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US and Russia in race to ban uranium trade – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – December 20, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

The United States Congress is preparing for critical votes on legislation impacting the country’s uranium industry, focusing on the Nuclear Fuel Security Act (NFSA) and a potential ban on Russian uranium imports. The proposed NFSA promises to direct about US$2 billion towards revitalizing the domestic uranium and nuclear fuel sectors, upon approval, as a matter of national security.

The funding may come from standard government appropriations or special emergency allocations by the White House. This governmental engagement has already been a catalyst, driving uranium prices up 71% year-on-year to a current high of US$82.30 per lb. of uranium oxide from below US$20.

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