Tag Archives: Rio Tinto

Playing Fast and Loose with Nuclear Substances: a missing radioactive capsule

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In the Australian Outback, authorities are engaged in an unusual search-and-recovery effort. Gone missing is a capsule less than an inch long of radioactive material that can burn or sicken anyone who touches it. Their problem is that it could be anywhere along a 900-mile stretch of highway connecting a Rio Tinto PLC mine to Perth, Western Australia’s state capital…The capsule, which is 8-millimeters (about 5/16s of an inch) long and contains a small quantity of radioactive Cesium-137, worked its way loose from a piece of equipment that Rio Tinto had sent to Perth by truck for repair.

The tiny capsule fell along a route that is almost the distance between New York and St. Louis. Complicating the search effort is a gap of nearly two weeks between when the equipment left Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri mine on Jan. 12, 2023 and when the capsule was discovered to be missing on Jan. 25… Authorities worry the capsule could have become lodged in a tire of any of the vehicles that use the highway, potentially exposing their occupants to radiation levels that they compare to receiving around 10 X-rays in an hour. Exposure could cause radiation burns or severe illness, said Andrew Robertson, Western Australia’s chief health officer. 

Excerpts from Rhiannon Hoyle, Missing Radioactive Capsule Prompts Search and Concern in Australia, WSJ, Jan. 30, 2023

The Mining Curse

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Two poor, fragile, post-Soviet democracies, two spectacular holes in the ground. Mongolia’s Oyu Tolgoi, or “Turquoise Hill”, is a vast mine in the southern Gobi desert, just 80km from the Chinese border. Kumtor in the Tian Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, operating since 1997, is if anything even more remote. Located beside a series of glaciers at 13,000 feet above sea level, it is the world’s second-highest gold mine.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of these two mines to their respective economies. Once completed, Oyu Tolgoi will be the world’s fourth-biggest copper mine. When the contract with Rio Tinto, an Anglo-Australian mining giant, was first signed in 2009, Oyu Tolgoi was predicted to add five percentage points to Mongolia’s annual economic growth, which, for a while, it did. The mine has created 15,000 jobs directly and another 45,000 indirectly, for a Mongolian population of 3.3m. As for Kumtor, its owner, Centerra, a Canadian exploration company, is the country’s largest private investor. In a good year the mine generates a tenth of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP and is the biggest contributor to the state budget.

Both mines loom large in national life. Both foreign operators won sweet, initial deals when naïve young states opened their doors to foreign investment. Controversy surrounding the mines was thus inevitable. Oyu Tolgoi has long been controversial. Politicians often accuse Rio Tinto of fleecing the country…In Kyrgyzstan the goverment accuses Centerra of corruption, enriching politicians instead of the national budget. 

Accusations of being cheated are common in poor, resource-rich countries. With Oyu Tolgoi, the stand-off is more easily resolved….A recent independent review makes it hard for Rio to deny it bears some blame for delays and cost overruns in developing the mine…. In Kyrgyzstan the situation is bleaker. There, bribery and corruption are not incidental to business but central to it….Foreign investors too often blame “resource nationalism” for their woes in host countries. That is self-serving. After all, the resources usually belong to the state. It is reasonable for citizens to ask how best to benefit from them…. 

Excerpts from Banyan: Mine for the Taking, Economist, Nov. 6, 2021

The Worst Cultural Calamity of 2020: Blowing Up the 46 000-Year-Old Caves at the Juukan Gorge

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In May 2020, mining giant Rio Tinto blasted through two rock shelters in Juukan Gorge in Western Australia in order to mine iron ore. Evidence of human habitation there dates back tens of millennia.  Rio Tinto obtained permission to mine in the area in 2013, a right which was not affected by the discovery of ancient artefacts such as stone relics, faunal remains and human hair in one of the Juukan caves a year later…

Critics of Rio Tinto say there is abundant evidence that the company was aware of the site’s importance before the blasting. For example, the BBC reported that in the days running up to the caves’ destruction in May 2020, Rio Tinto hired lawyers in case opponents tried to seek injunctions to stop them.

Some 7,000 artefacts were discovered during the excavation of one of the Juukan sites.

Excerpt from MERRIT KENNEDY, A Mining Company Blew Up A 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site. Its CEO Is Resigning, NPR, Sept. 11, 2020

Can Gucci Save the Steppes of Mongolia?

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  • Cashmere sweater
  • Rio Tinto Mine, Mongolia
  • Cashmere Goats

 Essential to the identity and economy of Mongolia—more than half of the country’s 3 million people live there—the grasslands are under increasing threat from overgrazing and climate change. Multiple studies over the past decade have shown that the once lush Mongolian steppe, an expanse twice the size of Texas that is one of the world’s largest remaining grasslands, is slowly turning into a desert. An estimated 70% of all the grazing lands in the country are considered degraded to some degree…. 

The collective here of a little more than 100 families is at the center of an unusual effort, run by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), to turn space-based maps of the grasslands into a tool for making grazing more sustainable. Supported by the world’s largest mining company and a luxury apparel giant, the pilot effort uses data gathered by NASA and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to help herders find places where the vegetation is healthy enough to sustain their voracious herds.

 Meanwhile, development, especially mining, has exponentially increased water usage. Twelve percent of rivers and 21% of lakes have dried up entirely. An increasing number of people, vehicles, and heavy equipment put additional stress on the land.  But one factor stands out: overgrazing, which, according to a 2013 study by researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, has caused 80% of the recent decline in vegetation on the grasslands.

Mongolia is now the world’s second-largest cashmere producer, after China. Goats, which account for more than half of all grazing animals on the grasslands, can be more lucrative than other livestock, but they’re also much more destructive than the sheep they’ve replaced because they eat roots and the flowers that seed new grasses=s.

WCS’s Sustainable Cashmere project may offer part of the solution. The project, whose budget the organizers won’t disclose, is funded by mining giant Rio Tinto, which runs a massive copper mine not far away, and Kering, the French luxury apparel giant that owns Gucci, Balenciaga, and other brands that need cashmere. Both aim to help offset their impact on the Mongolian environment, a requirement of Rio’s mining agreement and part of Kering’s corporate social responsibility program.

Excerpts Kathleen McLaughlin, Saving the steppes, Science, Feb. 1, 2019

The Battle for Iron Ore: Guinea

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Buried beneath the mist-capped mountains of south-eastern Guinea is one of the world’s biggest deposits of iron ore. Estimated at around 2.2 billion tonnes, the Simandou concession contains almost as much as the entire global iron-ore industry produced in 2013. Thanks to its size and unusually high quality, some experts say that whoever controls Simandou may dominate the world’s iron-ore sector for a generation.

After a decade of wrangling, Guinea has now struck a deal worth $20 billion with Rio Tinto, a British-Australian metals and mining giant, to exploit the southern half of the deposit. This should enable the company to mine 95m tonnes of ore from the jungle-matted mountains every year, creating 45,000 jobs and doubling the west African state’s GDP. Rio Tinto has also agreed to build a deepwater port and a railway line to take the ore 650km (400 miles) to the sea. Guinea’s government hopes it will create a “growth corridor” stretching the length of the country.

Until recently it had looked as though Guinea would gain little from its abundant natural resources, which also include diamonds, bauxite and gold. The dirt-poor country has been a classic case of the “resource curse”: blessed with natural riches but still languishing at the bottom of almost every development index, thanks to corrupt, warmongering rulers.

Days before he died in 2008, Guinea’s then dictator, Lansana Conté, signed over the rights to mine the northern half of Simandou, which Rio Tinto then owned, to an Israeli businessman, Benny Steinmetz, for $160m. Mr Steinmetz soon sold a 51% share on to a big Brazilian mining company, Vale, for $2.5 billion, prompting Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British telecoms billionaire and philanthropist, to remark, “Are the Guineans who did that deal idiots, or criminals, or both?”

In April 2014 the democratically elected government of President Alpha Condé stripped Mr Steinmetz and Vale of their concession. Mr Steinmetz has begun arbitration proceedings against the government of Guinea; Rio Tinto is suing both Steinmetz and Vale, accusing them of conspiring to steal its rights. The Guinean government has said that Vale may not have known about the various allegations of dishonesty against Mr Steinmetz and is therefore free to bid in the future for the rights to blocks in the Simandou area that have yet to be allocated.

Excerpts, Guinea and its iron ore: Let the people benefit, for once, Economist, June 7, 2014, at 57