Not to rain on anyones parade fellars but, free milling ore does not mean less tails.. take 1 million grams of rock,,, remove say 15 grams of gold still leave dam close enough to a tonne of sand in my books and it takes up about 30% more space than it originally did.
As for pumping it underground,, that is the best thing to do,, but you have to do a lot of prep work to back fill old workings, bund walls are required to be designed and constructed with settling areas so that the remaining slimes don't make it with the return water to the shaft pumps or they will get chopped out in no time.
Poly pipes need to be installed down the shaft and out to the workings or bore holes drilled down from the surface to deliver the sand.
You will still require 1 or 2 tailings dams, you need to cyclone it to probably de-slime it and to then mix it to get the right density so that it flows and don't forget that for every ton of sand you put back your including around 2 tons of water (2,000 lts), extra water for the mine's pumping system to pump back out, that means run the pumps longer or maybe even a second pump column and pump to handle the extra volume,, (20m3/hr of sand down the hole adds 40m3/hr of water,, that's about what a 4" bore pump can pump (usually rated at 45m3/hr,,'ish'),that water needs to be stored in dam/s for re-use.
Then there is the extra labor required say 2 underground and 1 or 2 on the surface to constastantly monitor, repair and unblock the sandline,,, and they always block trust me,,it can take hours or longer to unblock and get running again, the blokes underground on the sandfill have to be in constant contact with the others on the surface to adjust water and sand mix ,stop everything when it blocks and so on
Having said that, from what I've read in these posts the new manager has very good experiance in this class of mining, that majority of you seem comfortable with him, I reckon give him a chance to impliment his ideas and designs you'll most likely find that in the long run he will be on the right track and that ultimately mean returns on you investment. Dam I'll even getting a toey to grab some shares myself LOL ,,,, no if you wondering I don't know him :)
MCO Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
