First Cobalt

The concept of tailings reprocessing is not new. However, due to technical, policy and regulatory complexities, successes have been limited.  The recovery of metal values from tailings is generally viewed as the primary incentive, but is unlikely to be successful unless it is combined with a concomitant reduction in environmental liabilities and the development of downstream market opportunities for tailings products.  CanmetMINING is developing an initiative called “Mining Value from Waste”, which aims at bringing together the Canadian R&D community to develop a more cohesive and sustained effort to develop demonstrable reprocessing technologies to address a variety of mine wastes. While currently principally focused on tackling the enormous existing and historic tailings liabilities, it is expected that this effort will grow and eventually transition to include processing opportunities for eliminating or vastly decreasing the generation of new tailings.