How Dark Matter and Hydropower Saved Mining Communities From Collapse

This article is part of our series on responsible mining solutions. The push for clean energy is fueled by a growing demand for minerals, but conventional mining has a track record of harmful social and environmental impacts. Life beyond mine closure is another potential solution to that problem.

Given humanity’s thirst for clean, affordable energy, the demand for metals to power renewable technologies like solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries and transmission lines has never been higher. 

Expected demand for lithium and cobalt in 2030 can only be met halfway by the output of current mines, according to projections from the International Energy Agency. If we want clean energy, we need more mines, even despite our best recycling intentions.

But this raises one often overlooked key question about mining’s social and environmental impacts: What happens when the minerals are gone and the mine closes?

“A mine’s closure may be beneficial to a community if it caused more harm than good to the environment and people around it,” said Butch Uechtritz, co-founder of Beyond Life Of Mine, a mine closure consultancy in Australia. “At the other end, some mines will be the sole reason a community even exists in that location, and the closure will have significant impacts, including the community no longer existing.”

What happens after the mine dries up?

When minerals run dry and a mine closes, people, families, towns and even countries lose a significant source of revenue. Mines vary greatly in size and level of automation, employing anywhere from 100 to over 10,000 people. 

“In some places, mines support the community to such a level that once they leave, the healthcare, education and recreational facilities in that area become eroded,” Uechtritz said.

There are an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines in the U.S., 50,000 in Australia and 10,000 in Canada.

“Knowing at some point the resource extraction activities will decrease, the mining enterprise should look to transition that site to other activities to support the community to the same level as it previously did,” Uechtritz said.

Finding a way to repurpose a mine site for its next use is both a challenging and exciting proposition, one that often requires a “champion” to step up with a proposal for the next phase of a mine’s life.

“What’s interesting is that different people may see different opportunities for post-mine asset and land use,” said Jillian D’Urso, external relations and impact director of the Transformations in Mining Economies research group dedicated to mine closures and land transitions at the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Center (CRC TiME).

One example is the Stawell Gold Mine in the Australian town of the same name. In 2013, amidst the sudden news that the mine would close, stakeholders began searching for a way to repurpose the land. It just so happens that thousands of feet below the Earth's surface is the perfect place to study dark matter, a mysterious substance found across the universe that scientists are still trying to figure out. So, deep below the surface in old mine caverns, far away from radioactive cosmic waves that interfere with equipment, a dark matter lab was born.

“The Stawell Underground Physics Lab now operates alongside the Stawell Gold Mine,” D’Urso said. “It took a coalition of people and organizations to turn this from an idea into the only underground dark matter lab in the southern hemisphere,” D’Urso said.

The underground lab is a source of employment for some of the world’s brightest minds, but it is also expected to attract physicists, science nerds, and curious visitors from around the world. The lab was recently awarded a grant from the Victoria state government to develop a state-of-the-art science center to bring more tourism to the region.

A similar facility in the United States, the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, is also a repurposed mine used to research some of science’s deepest and darkest mysteries. But dark matter labs are few and far between, so the thousands of closing mines around the world need to find other champions to transition to the next phase of their lives.

In northern Australia, the Kidston gold mine was repurposed into a clean energy hub. The old mine had two pits, one higher than the other, that were filled with water when the mine closed. By digging a tunnel between these two pits, water can flow naturally down the tunnel into the lower pit, passing by a turbine that turns and generates electricity. Then, using energy powered by 540,000 solar panels at the site, water is pumped back up through the tunnel so the process can repeat. 

This innovative approach generates 2,000 megawatt hours of energy during one 8-hour cycle. The utility is connected to the national electricity grid and supports the region’s power supply. It is also the source of 900 jobs and the third-largest electricity storage device in the country. A 258-megawatt wind project is also in the planning stages at the site

Other creative uses for closed mines include a wildlife hospital and rehabilitation center, mining tourism centers, concert venues and theme parks.

Big mines can create big problems

Closing and transitioning a mine, however, is no simple task. In the Latrobe Valley in Australia, a mine is struggling to transition to its next use. The Hazelwood Mine closed in 2017. After discovering the nearby town was sinking slowly into the mine pit, the plan was to fill it with water to create a recreational lake —  a necessary step to stabilize it and the surrounding land. But many problems arose. The mine failed to find a suitable water source to fill the pit, there are concerns over what impact the project will have on existing waterways and groundwater, and there are contamination risks from toxic ash in the pit. 

As a result, the project failed to earn approval from the government and consensus from stakeholders. The local community does not agree that flooding the pit is the best thing to do given the potential risks. To compound the headache, this is just one of four closing mines in the region looking to fill their pits with water. As it stands, no solution has been found.

Mine transitions need community participation

“Champions are critical to achieving positive post-mine transitions,” D’Urso said. “Whether from the local community, the minerals industry, the wider private sector or government, these champions are catalysts for driving change.”

CRC TiME hands out awards for champions that help take a community from mining to the next use. Award recipients must make the community a central part of the discussions.

Ideally, mine closure plans should be incorporated into the initial planning of the mine, decades before facing closure, to avoid the unfortunate boom-bust cycle of some mining towns.

“The boom-and-bust paradigm of mining needs to be challenged. In my view, we should be looking at boom, hold, grow,” Uechtritz of Beyond Life Of Mine said. 

To achieve this, mining companies need to plan for a transition, knowing that at some point the mining activities will decrease. “In my mind, this is the miner's social license to operate in the first place,” Uechtritz said.

Mines impact a range of communities, from local to regional to even the national level. The big challenge is finding the next use for a mine that maintains, or increases, the benefits of all the communities impacted directly, or indirectly, by the mine. 

“Each community will have a different connection to the mine, from being directly employed by the mining company to just being a recipient of some of the broader benefits the mine brings — like social welfare programs partly funded by the royalties and taxes paid by the miner,” Uechtritz said. 

Creative minds can take advantage of the physical properties of a closed mine, with the potential for greatly reduced expenses on a project by repurposing the land and unique characteristics that a mining site offers.

“Keeping the existing infrastructure and landforms can reduce the [capital expenditure] for future users,” Uechtritz said. “These benefits can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And the mining company, if planning for the transition of the site from the onset of the mining operation, can potentially multiply these savings.”

When one mine closes, another door opens.