General discussion, page-10263

"So the Reality is at least 50% more than that to give the taper required,Which would be 42 187 500 Tonnes of Overburden. 48.187+ Million Tonnes of Overburden !!!! The cost would be Astronomical !!!!"

No, it's not.

Blasting.
Specialised buckets, trucks and conveyors.

You know - the mining industry.

You know a cubic metre of "dirt" here in the east is at least 2.5 tonnes?

16 - 17 bn cubic metres isn't even that much, not in the middle of nowhere.

Let's say I used AI to cheat here and save time. Claude AI tells me 17 bn cubic metres could be split out into 200 piles of dirt, being flattish cones roughly where the height is half of the base diameter.

Summary for each of the 2000 piles:308 metres in diameter at the base154 metres high8,500,000 cubic metres in volume21 million tonnes in weightThese piles are now much more manageable in size. To give you a sense of scale:The height (154 metres) is about half the height of the Eiffel Tower.The base diameter (308 metres) is about the length of three American football fields.The volume is equivalent to about 3,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools.These piles would be noticeable features in a landscape, but not overwhelmingly large. They would be similar in size to moderate hills or large building complexes.

You're also forgetting that they don't need to do all of the overburden removal at once, they can reuse empty pile areas and backfill from each under certain mine remediation rules.

Over say a 50-year mine life, they only ever need to make 40 or so piles and maybe 60 - 80 dedicated zones for overburden - they can use some of that for building dams, roads and other civil structures.