Innovations in Arctic mining: engineers address challenges.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Mining

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The Arctic is often described as unforgiving, remote, frozen, and extreme. Weather conditions present a particular set of challenges when it comes to working in the Arctic, but with engineering innovations some of those challenges have been addressed to bring opportunities to Alaska's mining industry.

Quality to Outset Costs

Arctic geology, particularly in Alaska, is structurally complex, says Richard Hughes, a principal at H2T Mine Engineering Services LLP.

"It hosts a lot of measured deposits like Red Dog, the Ambler copper districts, and the Fairbanks gold districts," Hughes says. "Alaska in fact has one of the largest coal resources in the world. It has more energy stored in coal--which probably won't be mined for a long time--than almost the entire Lower 48."

Although there is an abundance of minerals in Alaska, Hughes says Alaska is a difficult place to conduct exploration and to understand geology.

"The state is covered by a wind-blown silt called loess," Hughes says. "It masks a lot of the surface geology and makes it very difficult to do geologic mapping to find and clearly understand the mineral occurrences. Companies have to rely on geophysical and geochemical techniques which oftentimes provide an expression of potential mineral activity and environmental occurrences."

The challenge of exploring for mining opportunities--along with the geology-is the remoteness, Hughes says. Air travel in the summertime is sometimes the only viable means of transportation due to the lack of a road system in the Arctic.

Hughes says Alaska coal is cleaner than coal in the Lower 48. Low sulfur content limits the emissions of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, he says. Additionally Alaska mines are typically at a higher grade than most mines in the Lower 48.

"Higher grade deposits make the cost per unit of metal production lower, which is not necessarily an attribute of the Arctic environment, but it takes a higher-grade deposit in a difficult environment to develop an area like Alaska to support a viable project," Hughes says. "There really is nothing unique about mining in the Arctic, it's just the extremes of conditions that the Arctic miner must deal with."

Ambler Mining District

The Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects are a consolidation of the mineral interests of NovaCopper, Inc. and NANA Regional Corporation in the Ambler mining district just north of the Arctic Circle. The Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects consist of the Arctic...