Gold prices are up thanks to Middle East uncertainty, though Donald Trump’s drunken ramble yesterday paused investors’ enthusiasm for all that glitters. Gold prices are up since Trump’s inauguration but still below the 2011–2012 peaks above $1,700 an ounce:
This decade’s historically solid gold prices are apparently enticing a Minnesota prospecting company to come punch more holes in the Black Hills:
Minnesota-based F-3 Gold holds valid exploratory drilling rights to an area just north of Silver City. The plan would see the company drill roughly 40 pilot holes in search of gold. Mystic District Forest Ranger Jim Gubbles said the company will be responsible for refilling those holes after they extract a core sample.
“The drill sites are relatively small like 50 feet by 50 feet and they will drill from depths of 500 feet to 6,000 feet depending on what they find in their core samples and then they will analyze those core samples for the resources they’re interested in,” Gubbles said.
Before any drilling takes place the Forest Service will hold public comments on the plan. The first opportunity is set for next Thursday, January 16, from 5 to 7 at the Mystic Ranger District Office [Nick Reagan, “New Drilling Slated for the Black Hills,” KOTA-TV, 2020.01.08].
F3 Gold has been working since last spring to convince Black Hills residents that their gold exploration poses no environmental risks. They’ve also been squeezing in time to squeeze in with Governor Noem:
F3 Gold says their drilling will affect only 3.8 acres and use up no Rapid Creek water.
F3 Gold reminds us that gold isn’t just for survivalist collectors who think shiny ingots will help them get beans and ammo after the Trumpocalypse; it’s in cell phones, wind turbines, satellites, and stealth bombers. But F3 emphasizes that they aren’t gold miners; they are just prospectors, looking to find the gold and point miners to it. They note they haven’t found any gold around Silver City yet; they just tout a favorable geological model.
For the gold content in one cell phone, you need to mine about 7 kilograms of high-grade gold ore. This experiment found 36 milligrams (mg) of gold in the phone.
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-scientists-blender-reveal-smartphones.html
Both gold and silver are valued because they are great conductors, but gold is pretty chemically inert. Silver can oxidize.
In this one experiment, there was about twice the silver content as gold in the cell phone, and about 4.5 times as much neodymium.
Gold nanoparticles could also be used to improve energy storage.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-gold-nanoparticles-solar-energy-storage.html
“Star-shaped gold nanoparticles, coated with a semiconductor, can produce hydrogen from water over four times more efficiently than other methods—opening the door to improved storage of solar energy and other advances that could boost renewable energy use and combat climate change”
Remains to be seen whether mining for energy storage and renewables will stand a better chance of approval than mining just to produce more bling or nice heavy ingots.
See, if you’re a couple Minnesota sleaze balls peddling another Superfund site opportunity, you get a nice meeting and a picture with the Governor. If you’re a Girls Stater standing up for your Constitutional rights, you get bullied by the Governor.
Yeah, that’s about how it goes. The out-of-state interests kiss the Governor’s ass, and South Dakota citizens get to clean up the mess.
Just a little history. I was the last person who contested an exploration permit under the old South Dakota law’s governing mineral exploration and mining. You used to be able to petition for a hearing on exploration permits.
That photo makes me puke.
What in the world does the Dope Queen of delusion have with Minnesota?
She spends 1.4 million of our taxpayers money in Minnesota with her Dopey Meth message and now these two clowns.
Someone in the land of 10,000 lakes must have a photo of her with the Democratic Donkey.
Not a bad idea for mining in remote locations to have off-the-grid power.
“As wind and solar prices continue to fall, the business case for deploying renewable energy plants on mines is improving. The mining sector’s appetite for renewables is closely correlated to this cost reduction.”
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mining-companies-renewables-cost
drumpf wants to remove environmental review before new mining projects and pipelines are built.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-national-environmental-policy-act-nepa-review-oil-mining-projects.html
New mining projects also benefit renewables. Nothing is stopping those that mine for critical elements from self-imposing additional safety requirements…..but it will cost more to do that, and those costs get passed along.
Pebble mine, Bristol Bay and at least 20k first peoples in Alaska beg to differ.
Take your pick, Doc, of articles detailing why Pebble Mine is a disaster in waiting.
https://www.google.com/search?q=pebble+mine+could+destroy+bristol+bay&oq=pebble+mine+could+destroy+bristol+bay&aqs=chrome..69i57.29134j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Let’s address the uses of gold in real world terms. Jewelry (50%) and investment (40%) comprise most of the the current uses of gold. Various industrial uses make up 10%. We don’t need to mine any gold for industrial use. We should be recycling gold from jewelry and investments (coins and bars). Gold can simply be moved into more productive areas by government action.
Donald, I will disagree with regard to the relative percentages in that if you want a whole lot more renewables and batteries (if not cell phones), the current technologies will grow the use of things like gold and silver. If you can build an alternative that reduces or eliminates some of these demands, great….but they tend to be included because (a.) they work and (b.) they are available enough to make the cost feasible.
I will agree that gold could be put to better uses.
Ultimately mining and recycling are your choices for delivering the raw material for technology. Both can be energy intensive and each has their own environmental impact that must be addressed.
Mike, it will certainly cost more to do things right. Are monies spent on environmental protection and remediation worth it? I would say so if you want more renewables. That will make them more expensive because the costs will get passed along….but that’s business in a nutshell.
Sorry, there is very little gold used in technology or other industrial uses. Even with a boom in renewables, we can get it all the gold we need by simply banning gold jewelry and gold coins and bars. In fact, by doing that we would be reducing the cost of such technologies, because the price of gold would plummet.
The problem with the growth of renewables is that if we sprinkle in some silver and gold in each of these items, we are on-track today to just throw them away when they reach the end of the lifecycle.
If people are not giving up their gold, and I don’t expect them to, then you will need to mine more gold. It is perfectly rational to use gold for a higher purpose. That is why nobody will agree to it :^).
I do not have a good idea how much gold is in seawater, nor how much work would be required to extract gold from seawater, but that would be one alternative to avoid mining on land.
The USGS reports that outside of bullion in 2017, gold found use in the following areas:
Jewelry — 38%
Electronics — 34%
Official coins — 22%
Other — 6%
Putting used water and tailings waste behind a 700 foot high earthen berm. on premises , of the lasrgest remaining wild salmon migration and birth tributaries, in an active earthquake zone, is not a smart use of anybody’s money. The berm will collapse. Not if, but, when. All that poison goes into Bristol Bay and the rivers the salmon need to spawn in will be pre-occupied for up to fifty years.
At least 20,000 indigenous people”s lives and cultures depend on those salmon and that Bay. If the salmon are gone, the cultures go, too.
Dr. McT: Your numbers refer to gold use in the United States, not worldwide. Gold is an internationally produced and used metal and it is traded on the world market. The worldwide numbers are as I stated.
I found several jobs for my clients in computer recycling. They weren’t doing the end process, but pulling off parts and sending some off for reuse and others to various places where they go through whatever chemical processes were used to extract the metals. The parts with more gold were in high demand, and I would guess that 99% or more of those parts were recycled. My understanding was that the computer industry was trying to find other metals or alloys to use because using gold was expensive.
Platinum, palladium, and silver are the options to gold, according to the USGS.
Yeah, India in particular has a high demand for ornamental gold for weddings. But in the US there is a relatively high industrial use in electronics…on the order of jewelry.
Well Mike, pay to put the wastes somewhere else, build a better berm, reclaim some of the metals of interest prior to putting it behind the berm, use it in other items like concrete, etc. This issue occurs with coal mining and all kinds of mining. Doesn’t mean it cannot be done better. If you want the metals of interest, you do the mining or the recycling. Or you do without those critical elements for batteries and renewables. We can always burn more natural gas…..I guess.
We can’t always make more wild salmon, salmon fisheries, salmon habitat, or First People’s cultures.
Gold mining done on dry land away from rivers is easier to control the mishaps than in swampy areas between two major rivers.
You could use renewable energy to help clean or treat any water, or move tailings somewhere else.
It is probably a gut punch, Rhoden sized, to many libbies to discover their precious free and green “wind” power requires massive amounts of gold digging.
US and Canada reach an agreement with regard to securing supplies of critical elements.
“By finalising [the collaboration], we are advancing secure access to the critical minerals that are key to our economic growth and security – including uranium and rare earth elements – while bolstering our competitiveness in global markets and creating jobs for Canadians,” he said.
“The country supplies of 13 of the 35 minerals that the USA has identified as critical to economic and national security, and also supplies around one-quarter of the USA’s uranium needs”
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canada-and-USA-to-collaborate-on-critical-minerals
Doc-pontificating to a Black Hills population savvy to bs misinformation that the mining industry has been peddling since the 70s (1870s!) is like telling us, patronizing us, about how our climate-saving pivot from fossil fuels should be delayed until the mining industry learns to protect the environment and the nuclear industry figures-out a safe way to handle it’s waste decades too late! Instead these cheapskate industries pass their un-accountability onto the public and the GOP neuters responsible regulation and the few at the top of these extractive corporations walks off with monumental short-term gain (theft). Until the USA morally abandons this kind of “wealth” accumulation there is no future for western democracy.
A simple unresolved legacy from the last century of mining is 200 miles of creek/river bottoms laced with poison arsenic and heavy metals ect from Deadwood/Lead to the mouth of the Cheyenne River into the vast deep silt of Oahe Reservoir.
I advocate for doing renewables and batteries correctly. That means instituting best practices for the supply chain and waste management. Then add nuclear to solve the climate change problem as quickly as possible without emitting carbon (and generating less waste and using less land per kilowatt-hour).
Why not avoid poor practices, like environmental practices found in mining of rare earths in China, or child labor extraction of Cobalt in the Congo, or those technologies that have no plan for waste management.
It escapes me why we are not building more renewables and energy storage that implement better practices. Divest from those companies that follow poor practices, and invest in the others.
Doc I heard today the Nuclear industry wants thousands of new power plants to replace fossil fuels. Three Mile Island, Chernoble and Fukashima disasters show the potential for catastrophe despite technological assurances. We know institutions coverup truth and push your Republican party to deregulate safety and mining and water and air regs so your industry likely will take decades to earn trust. Boeing will likely be an example. Small nukes you propose seem to merely spread out the risk. Bigpicturescirncepodcast 5.22.19
Science not scirnce.
Surely you have pushed SDSU to divest of fossill fuels?
Surely small nukes will be recycled as are spent fuel rods sitting next to your reactors across the country?
SDSU switched from burning coal to natural gas for its boilers in 2012. Their new buildings are more efficient and they save some money in the heating and cooling. They have tried to make the campus more of a walking campus.
Overall, SDSU does a lot of research into biofuels, and the electrical engineers have a good power systems program to help integrate renewables with other sources.
I wouldn’t mind if some of the extra energy from renewables were to be redirected to melting snow and ice off of sidewalks and parking lots. That would be a better use than trying to sell somebody energy when they do not need it. Even warming up gas powered vehicles could add to the vehicle efficiency.
But no, it is not like buildings or vehicles are re-powered with solar, wind and batteries. And there are no charging stations next to the parking spots. We probably get our energy from hydro, wind, gas, and coal.
If it were up to me, the spent fuel rods would be recycled. Other nations do the recycling already.
The newer reactors, including the smaller reactors, should consume more of their fuel before they have to refuel the reactors. That in and of itself will help.
I should have added that there is also more LED lighting where it is feasible.
“the social cost of the phase-out to German producers and consumers is $12 billion per year (2017 USD).”
“over 70% of the cost of the nuclear phase-out [in Germany] is due to the increased mortality risk from local air pollution exposure as a consequence of producing electricity by burning fossil fuels rather than utilizing nuclear sources.”
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Unexpected-Consequences-Of-Germanys-Anti-Nuclear-Push.html
So this avoidance of nuclear has only led to more fossil fuels, and worse health outcomes. The consumer wants energy when they want it, for whatever reason they see fit to use it. If they want to go to the store to get a cold beer, beer which is in a refrigerator that uses electricity, they will go to the store and get it.
We do face a choice. Either we ramp back energy production significantly and pass the pain onto the global population, or we produce enough of our energy as clean energy to match our demand and pull everyone out of poverty. Which is more in the spirit of a liberal democracy?
That means either we build the better nuclear plants, or we avoid nuclear. The latter choice will emit a lot more carbon from natural gas and force everyone to live without having access to 24-7 power….which is not a winning political strategy. To think that we would actually build another chernobyl plant escapes logic. That is like building more of the wind turbine designs or batteries that are the most likely to catch fire.
But let us not forget that we would also require a significant increase in renewable energy as well. So we will absolutely need renewables to get their mining, recycling, and waste management acts in order. Nuclear energy can help power those items without emitting carbon!
Both nuclear and renewables would need to occur in greater quantities whether or not we have figured out carbon capture or how to provide enough energy storage. If we have the latter two items, then everything can compete with each other…I am fine with that.
Grudz, It doesn’t require gold mining to provide gold to industrial uses. You can get all that gold by banning gold hoarding and use of gold in jewelry.
Dr. McT said that gold mines could use renewable energy. That sounds like an idea for a bill or initiative.
They would want to do it if it saves them money for sure.
I think this venture would be more exploratory in nature, but if there are other critical elements of interest (i.e. from the periodic table), perhaps they could be captured too. I know there is interest in West Virginia about capturing rare earths from mining operations (coal, not gold).
The north project boundary line/two marked drill sites, are located approximately 3,000 feet from my back door. How lucky am I ? (gag)
The first of several information meetings was held last Thursday. I didn’t attend, but perhaps I should have. I think the skids are greased on this one and the meetings that they are holding are formalities only. Going through the motions.
According to an article in the Rapid City Journal, who covered the meeting – one of the reps indicated that the sound emitted from a drilling rig would be like that of a household refrigerator. Um, what?
It goes without saying that folks around her are not happy about this.
Donald Pay — any tips for me or my local community on things we could try to do to rally or organize to fight this? Specifically relating to mining in this state?
Pay attention, folks…. Nathaniel St. Clair @NatStClair
On Thursday the Trump administration is set to finalize a rule that will allow companies, landowners, and property developers to dump pesticides and other pollutants directly into streams and wetlands, threatening the drinking water of millions.
Poison the drinking water and every state will celebrate low populations.
MFI … Agropur Cheese in Lake Norden can run almost anything they’re dumping right into the Sioux River, now. CAFO’s can, too. What a horrible turn of the ecological clock this regulatory malfeasance will mean for SD’s future. That is unless these polluters choose to put their reputation above their shareholders profits. Newest poll shows that global warming and pollution are the number one issue with big corporations, now. It should only take twenty years for that to filter down to SD.