The Life-Cycle Of A Gold Mine: How Gold Is Mined

 

When wondering about how gold is mined, images of people wearing hard helmets labouring underground frequently spring to mind. However, mining the ore is only one step in a lengthy and intricate process. Long even before gold can be recovered, extensive exploration and production must take place, both to identify the amount of the mining operation as precisely as possible, as well as how to collect and treat the ore economically, safely and ethically. A gold mine can normally take between 10 and 20 yrs after a resource is identified to generate material that can be processed into bullion.
1 - 10 years for gold mine investigation

Exploration for gold mines is difficult and complex. It takes a large amount of time, money, and knowledge in a variety of disciplines, such as geography, geology, chemical, and engineering.

The possibility of a finding resulting in the development of a mine is extremely low - below 0.1 per cent of prospected locations will result in a producing mine. Furthermore, just 10% of worldwide gold resources contain enough gold to justify continued development.

Once the fundamental information regarding the local geological and the possibly feasible deposit has been determined, the gold ore body may be carefully analyzed and its feasibility evaluated.

1 to 5 years for the development of a gold mine

The next phase of the gold extraction and processing is gold mine development. It entails the planning and building of the mine as well as the supporting infrastructure. Mining businesses must get the required permissions and licences before they can start building. This usually takes many years, however, it varies widely depending on the locale.

Development may not be limited to the mine. Mining firms usually build local infrastructure and facilities, in addition to possible processing capacity, to serve both operational and administrative demands, as well as employee and social welfare. This development offers significant long-term assistance to local communities and is among the primary initial ways gold contributes to broader economic progress.

10 - 30 years of the gold mining operation

The gold mining operation stage depicts a gold mine's fruitful life, during which ore is collected and processed to produce gold. Processing gold entails converting rock and material into a high-purity metallic alloy called doré, which generally contains 60-90 per cent gold.

Several factors, like as the value of gold or material costs, will influence whether sections of an ore deposit are judged lucrative (economic) to mine throughout the course of its existence. Mining low-grade ore would become economical in times of higher prices because the higher cost will cover the increased expense of collecting and grinding larger amounts. When prices fall or expenses rise, it may only be economical to extract and treat higher-grade ores. When gold is extracted they are purified and structured into gold coins, gold bars, gold jewellery etc.

Shutdown and decommissioning of gold mines: 1 to 5 years 

After a mine has gone out of business, maybe because the ore deposit has been depleted or the residual deposit has become unsustainable (uneconomic) to mine, the attention shifts to its deactivation, dismantling, and restoration of the land on which it was built.

Reclamation of Gold Mines and Post-Closure 

Gold mining corporations often accept responsibility for site maintenance long after a site has shut down and been decommissioned - usually for a duration of five to ten years or above. The land will be recovered – cleaned and revegetated – during this time, and the mining firm will seek to ensure the mine's land acquisition and restoration to long-term conservation activities are successful.