Why is EPM looking at the tailings of the old Cryolite mine?
Since 1874, what started out as a lead mine became a Cryolite mine. This mine was the only place in the World to produce commercial quantities of Cryolite. Let's repeat that... The only place to produce Cryolite in the World. It was known as 'White Gold'. It was easy to spot and seperate the larger ore from surrounding rock at it was 'white as snow'. Mining and shipping out the Cryolite from this mine was extremely dangerous due to the location and many miners died and ships sunk battling sea ice and storms. The mine had little in the way of measuring Cryolite and how they got paid for it and taxed on it was rudimental at best with piles of Cryolite built by hand, by x width and y hight using large chunks of Cryolite and the small stuff tossed into the middle. Only pure Cryolite 'White as snow' was shipped with soiled Cryolite containing rock and other materials such as Zinc and Lead tossed into the sea to make a quay.
Why does this matter? Because the old timers were not interested in any other mineable or recoverable elements. They were sinking ships full of white gold let alone sort and ship Zinc, Lead and Quartz. And Cryolite was not formed in isolation... As the EPM releases show there is potentially significant amounts of Quartz and Zinc still in the pit...
The question on the tailings is what was also in the pit that was dug up and dumped whilst singularly chasing Cryolite. We know what the science says about the tailings on a macro view... and there is hundreds to potentially millions of tons of the stuff in piles and forming the roads (and still causing lead pollution to this day)
As the old timers were running out of Cryolite they did go looking and drilling for more. They stopped digging for it in the pit when they hit a floor of Quartz and they did not find any more up the hill with six cores drill and left them uncut.
So what's in the tailings? is there REEs, it is economic to reprocess potentially millions of tons of tailings because its economic now and because it will improve and reduce the environmental pollution from mining of the past...
That's the questions I have. I could be wrong and my research off in plant pixie land DYOR.
(20min delay)