Research in the mining industry has been in the news of late, seemin g to debunk Science Council of Canada Chairman Stuart Smith’s contention earlier this year that the industry has been dragging its feet in this direction.
We’ve had such initiatives as the joint effort of the Ontario Mining Association and the Mining Association of Canada to set up a mining research directorate, and to promote and finance two research centres patterned after Queen’s University’ Centre for Resource Studies in Kingston, Ont.
Under way, too, is a funding program (spearheaded by Noranda President Adam Zimmerman) for a new Earth Sciences Centre at the University of Toronto, which will boast a technologically- expanded and research-oriented geology department.
One of the latest moves on the research front, though, concerns Inco Ltd., which has been awarded a $1-million contract, under a Canada-Ontario mineral development agreement,(COMDA), to develop a 3-dimensional numerical model that can simulate the structural response of entire mines to the effects of bulk mining at depth using backfill.
Mine productivity and mine safety are expected to be enhanced by the Inco project, as well as by other lesser-cost new-technology projects awarded to Falconbridge Ltd., Denison Mines, Dome Mines, and Mining Resource Engineering, all under COMDA’s productivity and technology program.
The ultimate goal of the research is to at least maintain, and hopefully enhance, the competitive position of Canada’s mining products in world markets, as well as helping to ensure a safer working environment.
These are vital objectives, the first so much so that in a general sense failure to reach it could threaten the industry’s very survival.
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