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What the new diamond industry will look like (Mining Review Africa – November 5, 2019)

https://www.miningreview.com/

Speaking at the Diamond Conference in Gaborone, Botswana, De Beers Group CEO, Bruce Cleaver, answered a range of questions that are vital to the fast-changing diamond industry.

Here is what he had to say: How has the diamond industry has managed to sustain its success over the years? Why has Botswana managed to generate so much diamond success when many other countries have struggled to maximise the benefits of their diamonds? What will be important in future if we are to maintain success?

The answer, as is so often the case with simple-looking questions, is in fact complex. Success requires a combination of many different things, all of which depend on the efforts of a great many people and organisations.

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‘The next wave of innovation’: Nuclear reactors of the future are small and modular – by Emily Chung (CBC News Technology – June 25, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/

The pros and cons of small modular reactors and where we could see them generating nuclear power

The devastating impacts of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels are forcing countries around the world to look for zero-emissions alternatives for generating electricity.

One such alternative is nuclear energy, and the International Energy Agency — a group focused on energy security, development and environmental sustainability for 30-member countries — says the transition to a cleaner energy system will be drastically harder without it.

Canada’s government appears to be on board, saying nuclear innovation plays a “critical role” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as Canada moves toward a low-carbon future.

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Rickford takes lead in battle to modernize Ontario’s Mining Act – by Zahraa Hmood (Kenora Miner & News – November 4, 2019)

https://www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/

With Ontario’s legislative assembly back in session at Queen’s Park as of last week, Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford is moving forward his agenda to reduce provincial bureaucracy hindering the mining industry, including changes to the Mining Act.

Rickford said he held consultation meetings with stakeholders in several provincial industries over the summer, including the Mining Working Group, formed earlier this year to reduce red tape in the mining sector.

As the minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Rickford met with the group on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at Queens’ Park for Meet the Miners Day. “Generally speaking, every sector had a consensus that our system was too expensive and too complicated,” he said.

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This Bizarre Law Prevents Poland from Capitalizing on Copper Mine Profits – by Ross Marchand (National Interest – November 5, 2019)

https://nationalinterest.org/

Seventy years strong, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provides a resilient defense against international threats. But NATO is only as strong as its members are prosperous, and economic policies dictate the state of the union for individual countries. The recent ascension of Macedonia bodes well for NATO as the country has pursued strong, market-based reforms since the ugly collapse of Yugoslavia more than twenty years ago.

But long-standing members such as Poland have run into trouble as misguided government policies threaten to weaken the Eastern European nation. Cronyism and sector-specific onerous taxes threaten to impoverish Poland and make it difficult for vital minerals such as copper to get to market. For the sake of its future and for its allies, Poland must join Macedonia and push for market reforms.

Long-standing threats, such as Jihadi gains in North Africa and Russian encroachments on Eastern Europe, can be held in check by a strong NATO. But as many member-states have come to realize, defense investments can only be sustained on the back of a strong economy.

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Blood Gold in the Brazilian Rain Forest – by Jon Lee Anderson (The New Yorker – November 4, 2019)

https://www.newyorker.com/

Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet.

One day in 2014, Belém, a member of Brazil’s Kayapo tribe, went deep into the forest to hunt macaws and parrots. He was helping to prepare for a coming-of-age ceremony, in which young men are given adult names and have their lips pierced. By custom, initiates wear headdresses adorned with tail feathers. Belém, whose Kayapo name is Takaktyx, an honorific form of the word “strong,” was a designated bird hunter.

Far from his home village of Turedjam, Belém ran across a group of white outsiders. They were garimpeiros, gold prospectors, who were working inside the Kayapo reserve—a twenty-six-million-acre Amazonian wilderness, demarcated for indigenous people.

Gold mining is illegal there, but the prospectors were accompanied by a Kayapo man, so Belém assumed that some arrangement had been made. About nine thousand Kayapo lived in the forest, split into several groups; each had its own chief, and the chiefs tended to do as they pleased.

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Thousands of scientists sign open letter declaring Earth is facing a ‘climate emergency’ – by Bob Weber (Globe and Mail – November 6, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

THE CANADIAN PRESS: An open letter signed by thousands of scientists from around the world may be the clearest demonstration yet of their near-unanimous agreement over the globe’s emerging climate crisis.

Published Tuesday in the journal BioScience, the letter includes 11,258 signatures from 153 countries – including 409 from Canada. “We declare … clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” the letter’s opening statement says.

It’s another example of a growing willingness by scientists to leave their labs in an attempt to persuade the public to take seriously what research is telling them.

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Smaller, safer, cheaper: One company aims to reinvent the nuclear reactor and save a warming planet – by Adrian Cho (Science Mag – February 21, 2019)

https://www.sciencemag.org/

CORVALLIS, OREGON—To a world facing the existential threat of global warming, nuclear power would appear to be a lifeline. Advocates say nuclear reactors, compact and able to deliver steady, carbon-free power, are ideal replacements for fossil fuels and a way to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

However, in most of the world, the nuclear industry is in retreat. The public continues to distrust it, especially after three reactors melted down in a 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Nations also continue to dither over what to do with radioactive reactor waste.

Most important, with new reactors costing $7 billion or more, the nuclear industry struggles to compete with cheaper forms of energy, such as natural gas. So even as global temperatures break one record after another, just one nuclear reactor has turned on in the United States in the past 20 years. Globally, nuclear power supplies just 11% of electrical power, down from a high of 17.6% in 1996.

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Ontario wants out of historic lawsuit – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star/North Bay Nugget – November 6, 2019)

https://www.nugget.ca/

Judge to rule on whether province should pay annuities to First Nations in northeastern Ontario

A Sudbury judge is being asked to determine whether the province should be on the hook for annuity payments owed to First Nations in northeastern Ontario.

Superior Court Justice Patricia Hennessy has reserved her decision on this and other legal issues following nine days of hearings in Sudbury last month in her historic ruling involving the 21 First Nations that are part of the Robinson-Huron Treaty.

In December, Hennessy ruled the First Nations should have received increased annuity payments under the Robinson-Huron Treaty that was signed in 1850.

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Brazil regulator says Vale ‘negligence’ may have cost lives – by Jake Spring and Christian Plumb (Reuters U.S. – November 5, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s mining regulator on Tuesday blasted iron ore miner Vale SA for failing to disclose problems with a mining dam before a deadly collapse in January, saying this kept the agency from taking actions that could have saved lives.

The dam in Brumadinho collapsed and flooded a nearby company cafeteria and the surrounding countryside with mining waste, killing more than 250 people. It was Vale’s second deadly dam collapse in less than four years.

The regulator’s report on its probe into the disaster is the latest blow to the reputation of Vale, which is under criminal investigation over accusations that top executives ignored warning signs about the dam.

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Australia’s threat to outlaw mining protests highlights industry split – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – November 3, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia (Reuters) – The boss of a major mining company last week made a plea to the industry to do more to win the hearts and minds of the broader public. A few days later the leader of the country hosting the bulk of his operations threatened to outlaw those opposed to mining.

What makes the situation more bizarre is that the threat against the right to protest was made by Scott Morrison, the prime minister of Australia, a country with a long democratic tradition and a history of political tolerance.

Morrison, the leader of the conservative Liberal Party, told a meeting of a mining lobby group on Nov. 2 that there is a “new breed of radical activism” that didn’t permit the expression of alternative viewpoints.

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Baffinland’s Inuit landlord won’t support Mary River expansion – by Jim Bell (Nunatsiaq News – November 4, 2019)

https://nunatsiaq.com/

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which controls most of the land occupied by the Mary River iron mine, refuses to endorse or support the mine owner’s railway-based expansion proposal, says the organization’s president, P.J. Akeeagok.

Following a special board meeting held on Oct. 30, the QIA dropped this bombshell declaration into the hands of the Nunavut Impact Review Board in the form of a letter on Nov. 1, just before the start of the review board’s final public hearing in Iqaluit on Baffinland’s phase two expansion proposal on Nov. 2.

At their special meeting, QIA board members voted unanimously to take that position, Akeeagok’s letter said. “Many of QIA’s environmental and cultural concerns regarding Baffinland’s Phase 2 proposal have not been adequately resolved. We are also concerned that there are issues raised by impacted communities that have not yet been addressed,” QIA said.

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Alberta needs a new deal, fast, or separation is inevitable – by Diane Francis (Financial Post – November 4, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Alberta is Canada’s breadwinner, but is treated like a stepchild

Alberta must adopt Quebec’s playbook and become a “nation” within a nation or threaten to leave. The ballot box does not work and Alberta is Canada’s breadwinner, but is treated like a stepchild.

Step one is for Alberta to demand the immediate construction of the TMX pipeline and the scrapping of Bills C-48 and C-69. No delays.

Then Alberta should stage a referendum before Christmas 2019 on opting out of, or revamping, Canada’s unjust equalization system. (Since 2010, Ottawa has taken an average of over $20 billion a year out of Alberta; Quebec receives $13 billion, or two-thirds of every dollar in the federal equalization program.) It’s a bribe to Quebec with Alberta money which is why Justin Trudeau recently extended the system to 2024 — an extension which should be nullified.

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Coal and the Industrial Revolution – by Dr. Thomas G. Andrews (Brewminate.com – March 7, 2019)

https://brewminate.com/

Dr. Thomas G. Andrews is the Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado.

As of 1860, the United States was an industrial laggard. Great Britain, France, and Germany each produced more goods than their transatlantic counterpart. By 1900, however, U.S. industrial production exceeded “the combined manufacture of its three main rivals.” Why, and with what consequences?

Rise of Fossil Fuels

Most textbooks provide at least a few glimpses of the transformation of the U.S. into a fossil-fueled nation: a photo of child laborers outside a Pennsylvania coal mine, a statistic on rising coal production, perhaps a brief mention of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 (in which Colorado National Guardsmen killed 18 men, women, and children during a miners’ strike in southern Colorado).

Aside from these disconnected tidbits, though, textbooks offer little insight into the profound historical significance of energy, nor do they provide a coherent interpretation of what the adoption of fossil fuels portended for the nation’s economy and environment.

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Column: Fizzing nickel distracts from the LME Week metals gloom – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – November 4, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – “Near the bottom or worse to come?” The title of CRU Group’s panel discussion last Tuesday neatly sums up the downbeat mood of this year’s London Metal Exchange (LME) Week, the annual gathering of the world’s metals industry.

This time last year the cocktail party chatter was all about President Trump and the escalating trade war with China. One year on and the Sino-U.S. stand-off is still tantalisingly suspended between deal/no-deal (delete according to personal preference).

Industrial metal markets have paid the price for this year-long showdown. Political deadlock has accentuated China’s manufacturing slowdown and further depressed an already struggling global automotive sector.

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COLUMN-Zinc and lead supply hits push expected surpluses into 2020 – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – November 4, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Zinc and lead are both in short supply on the London Metal Exchange (LME). Headline zinc stocks of 53,875 tonnes are back at April levels, while “live” tonnage of 27,800 tonnes is the lowest it’s been in at least 20 years.

Lead stocks are a little higher at 70,075 tonnes but have failed significantly to rebuild from July’s decade low of 55,475 tonnes. Unsurprisingly, both LME contracts are experiencing time-spread tightness.

Zinc closed last week with cash metal commanding a $61-per tonne premium over metal for three-month delivery. Lead’s front-month curve structure is also in backwardation to the tune of $7.25 at Friday’s close. The sister metals have defied expectations of a shift into supply surplus throughout this year and they continue to do so.

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