By the way if you want really detailed map of the area I suggest www.mapy.cz, they have topographic and satellite maps more detailed than Google and they include the locations of historical mines and shaft entrances which you won't find on Google Maps (or anywhere else). They even have a local version of Google Street View. E.g. check this:
https://i.imgur.com/ErUdYbo.pngHi, I'm not a mining expert so I don't know the difference between sub-horizontal greisen and sub-vertical veins... I also don't know what a pinge area is.
All I can say is that I'm Czech and 100% confident there wasn't pit mining - tin was mined in
tunnels even in 15th century, 40 meters deep and not in an open pit. Some pits were made in 19th-20th century and then abandoned, no idea how much they were used. Some pictures are here:
http://www.mining.cz/TEXTY/Cinovec/Cinovec.htmThe lithium is much deeper than tin (not sure if 2-4 times deeper?) and you can check interview with this local miner guy:
https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/domaci/lithium-tezba-doly-cinovec-pegrimek.A200521_191541_ekonomika_ven and his answer to the 14th question. He is asked exactly this question about possible sink holes. His answer is that they'd be moving in hard rock with strength up to 200 megapascals (I have no idea what average strength in an average mine is) and so that is much better than some black coal and uranium mining they've done previously.
Regarding the question about "
pretty little villages" - the area on the Czech side really isn't something historical or valuable, German side is somewhat nicer because of history until 1989. In the 1990s it was a very popular border crossing to Germany, attracting the Germans cross-border to stuff like casinos and prostitution. Now the area is mostly forest, some fields with a few abandoned buildings and it's basically just a boring road. On mapy.cz you can also look for "Cínovecká halda" that is old tailings area which was bought by another company (RSJ) that also considered using the tailings to process lithium. The small town where more people actually live is called Dubi and it's a few kilometers down the road, Cinovec isn't an actual town but just a municipality part (part of Dubi) and the houses in Cinovec are pretty far away from the old mine.
As far as I know there isn't a huge lobbying group or protests against the mine - I hear that all the time from the planned Spanish lithium mine (San Jose), I haven't heard any strong opposition against Cinovec.
No idea what I should think about VUL (Vulcan), their numbers sound almost too good to be true, especially the energy part. However, if they can really produce lithium at the cost they declared in PFS and with no CO2 emissions, then you can consider EMH basically useless. Remember that Germany has gone insane with green subsidies, emissions trading schemes, shutting down nuclear and coal plants and other stuff like that and as they're the biggest EU economy, they affect entire Europe with their decision. If there's political will to support projects like VUL, then EMH has no future.
(20min delay)