Stockwatch -- is that free?
Anyway a snipe at the Romanian Academy, who should know better. Cyanide in free water is so short lived that it is a problem in mills trying to get it to survive long enough to attack the gold. Many substances are cyanicides, or cyanide killers -- among them iron, sulfur, acid, copper, etc.. Ways to dealing with cyanide in effluent include, ultraviolet light, chlorine, sulfurization, potassium permanganate, and acidulation-cyanide-recovery by the Mills Crowe process. All are efficient and complete to yield a tailings pond that should be harmless. Overflow into natural drainages should leave lower than detectable cyanide levels within 24 hours. Sunlight in clear water kills cyanide quickly.
Cyanide will not harm the environment if handled properly. It continues to break down after leaving the plant, and it is this continuous self-abatement that makes it a safe chemical to use environmentally overall, s despite its initial extremely poisonous nature. At low levels the poisonous effect is suddenly negated, as animals have a natural low level cyanide hanlding system in their cells. Very low levels of cyanide are found in plants roots, vegetables and seeds. Cyanide has been used in mining and in the metal plating industry for 116 years in North America with few incidents of any kind. There have been no serious tailings spills in Canada in the entire time it has been used in this industry.
One could inform the Romanian Academy that the greatest use of cyanide worldwide is not in mining but in metal plating, where 90% of industrial cyanide is consumed. Metal plating shops use far higher concentrations of cyanide than mines do, and so far have managed to do it safely. Throughout Romania, without doubt, as it is a fairly industrialised country, there is cyanide in daily safe use. Why it is not harming the environment there is a mystery.
The recent spectacular tailings spill in eastern Europe had to do with a plating plant with an outdoor extremely high grade cyanide pond which was improperly engineered on the side of a hill in an earthquake area. The pond should have been located lower in the valley, have been moated with chlorinated water to neutralize and dilute possible spill, and concreted against breach. In addition there is no reason for this pond to have been as high in cyanide as it was. The failure of engineering projects to take propert precautions in a hazardous area, is not the fault of the process chemical.
Where there is gold there is politics, and where there is politics, money and votes, not reason rules.
EC<:-}*
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