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Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake

Oftencold said:
This is Alaska; a 23 acre lake is a puddle, put 50 of them together and you have an ornamental pond.

Don't all of you have environmental problems in your own (tiny) States that need your attention?
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If you lived on that lake or close, would you be cool with it?
 
Oftencold said:
Are you serious? Gold is one of the most useful industrial metals fore several reasons, including its high electrical conductivity, almost unbelievable malleability and resistance to corrosion. if it wasn't used for jewelry, it would still be in high demand.
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It's sooooooooooo precious, that if it wasn't used for jewelry, we'd use it for important stuff? :screwy

Yes, it is all those great things you mentioned. So why do we use it mostly for bling? Why is that? Please, I wanna hear it from you.
 
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Oftencold said:
Heck, yes. We're trying to get a different kind of mining here right now.

If I lived there, I would probably be trying very hard to get a job with the mine.
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Just don't drink the water, m'kay?
 
The Canadian government authorized similar corporate behaviour in Canada a year and a half ago, mostly in the prairie provinces. The case is on its way to the Supreme Court.

I've read the environmental assessments on using lakes for this. Most of the time it kills all life within the matter of years. There are some marshland plants that can absorb toxic material and break it down over time, but the animal life doesn't have this ability.

After living in China for a couple of years, I am completely astonished by how non-chalantly North America treats its natural resources. We are so incredibly wasteful and dismissive of the natural bounty we possess. I wish people could see how it is in most other places in the world, where you have to go down the street and buy a jug of water to lug home because the tap water will make you seriously ill if you drink it.

In developed nations, there is no excuse. Corporations have too much power to pay off government to turn a blind eye or even create laws supporting this behaviour, and because people don't understand what they are losing (since they've always had it), they aren't fighting back. It's sickening.
 
Middleground said:
It's sooooooooooo precious, that if it wasn't used for jewelry, we'd use it for important stuff? :screwy

Yes, it is all those great things you mentioned. So why do we use it mostly for bling? Why is that? Please, I wanna hear it from you.
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I'm assuming then that you wear no jewelry whatsoever?? No gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, etc., etc.
 
obvious Child said:
Here's a list of chemicals commonly found in tailings:

* Arsenic - Found in association with gold ores
* Barite
* Calcite
* Fluorite
* Radioactive materials - Naturally present in many ores
* Mercury
* Sulfur - Forms many sulfide compounds / pyrites
* Cadmium
* Hydrocarbons - Introduced by mining and processing equipment (oils & greases)
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Besides all that, it's not so bad.
 
I don't understand how anyone can justify not disposing of this stuff in a way that is less detrimental to our environment.
 
Oftencold said:
This is Alaska; a 23 acre lake is a puddle, put 50 of them together and you have an ornamental pond.
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And that is relevant how?

Dumping such chemicals especially when tailings have high concentrations is not a good thing regardless of where you live.

Don't all of you have environmental problems in your own (tiny) States that need your attention?
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You do realize that the federal regulations apply to all states no? That tailings are now filler for all states no?
 
RightinNYC said:
That seems pretty concerning on its face, though I wonder what the concentration would be after dilution in the lake.
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Likely still high. Remember, there are tons of tailings that come out of mines. When they have concentrations in the thousands per million and safe drinking levels are measured in the billions, you'd need to dump it in massively large water bodies like oceans to get that level of dilution.

There's an intrinsic revulsion toward the idea of dumping anything in a lake, but it isn't clear (to me at least) that such a policy would be that much worse than the alternative:
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But why is that the only alternative? Couldn't they do a similar things to how Superfund is done? Truck it to dry clay bed, dump it and then cover it with plastic lining. Just because we are lazy and cheap doesn't give us to right to dump toxic materials anywhere we please.
 
Middleground said:
It's sooooooooooo precious, that if it wasn't used for jewelry, we'd use it for important stuff? :screwy

Yes, it is all those great things you mentioned. So why do we use it mostly for bling? Why is that? Please, I wanna hear it from you.
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We use it mostly for bling because of its relative scarcity. If it was everywhere, it would have no value and could be used, similarly to copper, in appliances and the like.

Gold is okay in that it stabilizes economies and provides a global currency upon which countries are able to print money. I'm concerned about the effects on the environment though.

Maybe we should kill two birds with one stone and next time we bomb another country, just dump all of our wastes on them until they can't take it anymore.
 
Smoke[MaxX] said:
We use it mostly for bling because of its relative scarcity. If it was everywhere, it would have no value and could be used, similarly to copper, in appliances and the like.

Gold is okay in that it stabilizes economies and provides a global currency upon which countries are able to print money. I'm concerned about the effects on the environment though.

Maybe we should kill two birds with one stone and next time we bomb another country, just dump all of our wastes on them until they can't take it anymore.
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Hey! I wasn't asking you... but you're right. So far, we as a society have not found enough gold to fill 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and that's about it. As for it's destruction to the environment, it's devastating.
 
Middleground said:
It dosen't. Some crowns and bridges are made from gold, so people can bling their smiles. But, other things can be used that perform as well or better.
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I'm not talking about bling style teeth, I'm talking about regular crowns and bridges.

Some people have allergic reactions to non precious metals and have to have gold on the cap of the crown.
The cap is the metal which is used as a base to build the porcelain tooth on.

I'd take a picture of some models I have but I'm too lazy at the moment.

Working with gold is a hell of a lot easier than non precious metals.

Middleground said:
I have no idea what gold conducts. Since gold mining has begun, we have collected no more than would fill a football stadium. So tell me, what do we use it for other than bling???

All that for bling. Not worth it, IMO.

Please read the rest of the article. It's an excellent and informative read.
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Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity. It doesn't degrade like other metals do. It's used in a lot of high tech electronics.

Gold is used in medicine, industry, electronics, dentistry, even NASA uses gold to cover the visors on astronauts space suits.

Btw I don't agree with them dumping the leftover mining stuff in that lake but gold is very useful outside of the bling stuff.
 
obvious Child said:
Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake



Court OKs dumping gold mine waste in lake - Yahoo! News

Tailings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While I understand the basis of their opinion, redefining arsenic as filler material and then allowing it to be dumped into lakes where it will kill all most life is pretty nuts.
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Hey maybe it's because the United States has been caught with its pants down and needs to start mining gold really fast and don't give a damn where the waste goes.
 
obvious Child said:
While I understand the basis of their opinion, redefining arsenic as filler material and then allowing it to be dumped into lakes where it will kill all most life is pretty nuts.
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Why do you think there's arsenic in it? Just because wikipedia says there is arsenic in some tailings doesn't mean, obviously, that it is present in all of them.
 
Middleground said:
You'd be surprised at what some companies get away with. We don't hear the half of it. And this instance, it just sickens me, especially because gold is a useless metal. All it does is provide bling.
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The computer that you're using has some of that useless metal in it.
 
obvious Child said:
Likely still high.
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You don't have any idea what the original concentration is, but you think after dilution that the concentration will likely still be high?

Well, I think it's likely to be almost zero.
 
PeteEU said:
They should dump it in every Republican's swimming pool instead starting with Palin's.
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If I remember my history correctly, the primary reason that explorers came to the New World (I believe the Spanish), was to find gold. Interesting. :2wave:
 
Feel free to give up the advantages of refined metals, mining and so forth at any time to provide us an example.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
IGold is an excellent conductor of electricity. It doesn't degrade like other metals do. It's used in a lot of high tech electronics.

Gold is used in medicine, industry, electronics, dentistry, even NASA uses gold to cover the visors on astronauts space suits.
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Since gold has been first mined, humans have found no more than what will fill 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Yet I am being told it's being used for a ton of more things besides bling. What am I to believe? There's only so much to go around.
 
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RightinNYC said:
That seems pretty concerning on its face, though I wonder what the concentration would be after dilution in the lake.
...
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In lake bottoms, mercury can can become more dangerous to us:

Methylmercury (CH3Hg+) is a neurotoxin, and the form of mercury that is most easily bioaccumulated in organisms. Methylmercury consists of a methyl group bonded to a single mercury atom, and is formed in the environment primarily by a process called biomethylation. Mercury biomethylation is the transformation of divalent inorganic mercury (Hg(II)) to CH3Hg+, and is primarily carried out by sulfate-reducing bacteria that live in anoxic (low dissolved oxygen) environments, such as estuarine and lake-bottom sediments.

Methylmercury Definition Page
 
Middleground said:
Since gold has been first mined, humans have found no more than what will fill 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Yet I am being told it's being used for a ton of more things besides bling.
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I don't know about the truth of your first statement, but why would that disprove the second?

At the end of 2006, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 tonnes. [1] This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of just 20.2 meters. Modern industrial uses include dentistry and electronics, where gold has traditionally found use because of its good resistance to oxidative corrosion and excellent quality as a conductor of electricity.
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Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of one square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become translucent. The transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold strongly reflects yellow and red.[2]

Gold readily creates alloys with many other metals. These alloys can be produced to modify the hardness and other metallurgical properties, to control melting point or to create exotic colors (see below). Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity and reflects infra red radiation strongly. Chemically, it is unaffected by air, moisture and most corrosive reagents, and is therefore well-suited for use in coins and jewelry and as a protective coating on other, more reactive, metals.
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Gold, or alloys of gold and palladium, are applied as conductive coating to biological specimens and other non-conducting materials such as plastics and glass to be viewed in a scanning electron microscope. The coating, which is usually applied by sputtering with an argon plasma, has a triple role in this application. Gold's very high electrical conductivity drains electrical charge to earth, and its very high density provides stopping power for electrons in the SEM's electron beam, helping to limit the depth to which the electron beam penetrates the specimen. This improves definition of the position and topography of the specimen surface and increases the spatial resolution of the image. Gold also produces a high output of secondary electrons when irradiated by an electron beam, and these low-energy electrons are the most commonly-used signal source used in the scanning electron microscope.
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# As gold is a good reflector of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared and visible light as well as radio waves, it is used for the protective coatings on many artificial satellites, in infrared protective faceplates in thermal protection suits and astronauts' helmets and in electronic warfare planes like the EA-6B Prowler.
# Automobiles may use gold for heat insulation. McLaren uses gold foil in the engine compartment of its F1 model.[15]
# Gold can be manufactured so thin that it appears transparent. It is used in some aircraft cockpit windows for de-icing or anti-icing by passing electricity through it. The heat produced by the resistance of the gold is enough to deter ice from forming.
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The concentration of free electrons in gold metal is 5.90×1022 cm-3. Gold is highly conductive to electricity, and has been used for electrical wiring in some high energy applications (silver is even more conductive per volume, but gold has the advantage of corrosion resistance). For example, gold electrical wires were used during some of the Manhattan Project's atomic experiments, but large high current silver wires were used in the calutron isotope separator magnets in the project.

The use of gold in other applications in electronic sliding contacts in highly humid or corrosive atmospheres, and in use for contacts with a very high failure cost (certain computers, communications equipment, spacecraft, jet aircraft engines) remains very common, and is unlikely to be replaced in the near future by any other metal.
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tryreading said:
In lake bottoms, mercury can can become more dangerous to us:

Methylmercury (CH3Hg+) is a neurotoxin, and the form of mercury that is most easily bioaccumulated in organisms. Methylmercury consists of a methyl group bonded to a single mercury atom, and is formed in the environment primarily by a process called biomethylation. Mercury biomethylation is the transformation of divalent inorganic mercury (Hg(II)) to CH3Hg+, and is primarily carried out by sulfate-reducing bacteria that live in anoxic (low dissolved oxygen) environments, such as estuarine and lake-bottom sediments.

Methylmercury Definition Page
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Concentration is important.
 
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