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Archive for April, 2007

Gas from coal versus valley-fill mining: a new national debate or civil war?

Posted in Coal, Global Warming, North America, Oil sands, Uranium on April 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

In the early 1960s in South Africa my parents moved to Evander, a mining town in sight of Sasol where coal was turned into petrol or gas as we term it in the United States.  The plant was built in response to international sanctions over apartheid.  If I recall correctly, Fluor designed and built the plant.  So it should [...]

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Maryland coal mine slope stability accident a wake up call to ignore political correctness

Posted in Coal, North America, Open Pit on April 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

It is hard to believe that a 23-meter high wall of an open pit coal mine in Maryland can just fail and “cover” two miners.   Is this another instance of human hubris?  I know the old adage that a slope is stable on the morning of the day it fails.  But was there no monitoring [...]

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Mining absences and the midwest

Posted in About the news on April 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Nothing about mining, just a brief report on personal doings.  I have just arrived in Cedar Rapids after a flight from Las Vegas where I spent two days .  We did the Strip in the best tradition: one thing I miss is the ability to pop a 25 cent piece into a machine.  Now the least [...]

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Reverse mining to promote global non-warming: GoldSim and Los Alamos cooperate

Posted in About the news, Global Warming on April 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Is it fair to brand carbon sequestration as a mining activity?  It is sort of mining in reverse:  putting something into the ground instead of taking it out.  Taken to its logical extreme, we could brand putting high-level radioactive waste into Yucca Mountain as reverse-mining, and even filling of open pits with household solid waste [...]

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Kansas mining revisited

Posted in Coal, Environment, Mining history, North America, People on April 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

My two older kids did their undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.  I recall the old town, its beauty, its quaintness, and the many wooden boxes I found in the second-hand stores that line the streets. I recall average food, carelessly served by students, in old, bare-brick wall buildings.  I recall cold winters [...]

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Mine containment zones could save millions and the groundwater

Posted in About the news, Hydrology and hydraulics, Open Pit, Reclamation on April 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

The California State Water Resources Control Board by Resolution 92-49 adopted a policy that an area of contaminated groundwater where cleanup cannot be achieved may be designated a Containment Zone. To date no mine in the state has been designated a containment zone, but such a designation would bring clarity and closure to many of [...]

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Mining research & development should be kept out of the universities and away from other cosseted groups?

Posted in About the news on April 17, 2007 | 1 Comment »

A conference was planned, people were writing and organizing, and then thing went awry. Here is what I wrote on the topic of Mining Research and Education in anticipation of the now postponed conference. I post these writings now, rather than hide them for a year or more, in the hope that controversial as they [...]

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Groundwater in mining: some old-time, classic texts for fun and enlightenment

Posted in About the news, Hydrology and hydraulics on April 16, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Sunday is a time for reading.  Actually, I spent yesterday kind-of sailing, as described in a separate piece below.  I also cleaned out the attic and found some of my old text books on groundwater.  Last evening I reread them, and here is a review of some classics that reward attention:  

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To save money and minimize NPV, choose a stable site for your tailings

Posted in About the news, Geology, Reclamation, Tailings on April 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Wandering the by-ways of the Internet, this news release caught my eye: More than 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved away from the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West. The Department of Energy said the radioactive tailings about 750 feet from the river [...]

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Climate change and other things that change societies

Posted in About the news, Global Warming, Mining history on April 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

The weekend was an orgy of hedonistic southern California pleasure:  expensive coffee in the sun; a bike ride along the nine-mile beach; sandcastles besides the incoming waves; wonder at the ski kites that dominate Belmont Shores; and then to San Pedro harbor where we took off on my daughter’s 28-ft long Westsail.  I first saw this yacht [...]

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