CHARGE IT

CHARGE IT

We learned recently that nickel/copper production has been suffering at Falconbridge’s Sudbury refinery. Faced with a critical demand overload, Ontario Hydro triggered a clause in its electrical supply contract with Falconbridge and temporarily pulled the plug on the metalmaker’s electrical feed.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, such supply failures may never occur again. To supplement supply capacities at peak demand periods, large banks of lead-acid batteries are being developed at research facilities in California. A utility would charge a bank of batteries during low demand hours and then discharge them into the power grid during peak demand, explains a Cominco Metals publication on metal use. Alternatively, large energy customers could shave electrical requirements during peak demand periods with supplemental energy from their own battery banks.

Utilities, battery manufacturers and the International Lead Zinc Research Organization are studying the development of load- levelling or peak-demand shaving technology.

MINING OUR LEADERS’ PASTS

While it is widely known that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan were pals because of their shared Irish heritage, it is less well known that Mulroney and the latest White House installation, President George Bush, also have ties that bind (however slightly). While our leader was working his way to the top post at Iron Ore Co. of Canada, Bush was a director of Texasgulf Inc. Texasgulf, of course, discovered the Kidd Creek orebody.

The pictures above and below are of a younger Bush, who appeared in the 1978 Texasgulf annual report, and a pre-political Mulroney.

MINING COMPANY FOUND NEGLIGENT

Cameco has run afoul of uranium mining regulations because of a spill last November from a pipeline that carried mine water contaminated with radium, arsenic and nickel, according to press reports. Cameco was found negligent by a government of Saskatchewan investigation for not maintaining a flow alarm system on the pipeline

Saskatchewan’s Environment and Public Safety Ministry was directed to review all mine operating licenses in the province’s north and make any changes required to reduce the potential for other spills.

BORING RECORD

The model 1410-252 tunnel-boring machine (TBM), made by The Robbins Co., has set two Norwegian tunnelling records on a hydroelectric project above the Arctic Circle. The TBM bored 75.8 metres in one day and 296.5 metres in one week late last year.

A standard boring week consists of two 10-hour shifts per day, Monday through Thursday; one 6-hour and one 10-hour shift on Friday; and a 6-hour Saturday shift. The previous record, set by another Robbins machine in 1987, had been 62 metres for best day and 275 metres for best week.

The latest 4.3-metre TBM incorporates a new, 483-mm-diameter disc-cutter and is load-rated at 32 tons. Nearly 50 km of tunnels will be bored through massive formations of micaschist and granite.