Bingham Canyon

Intrusive Deposits. Deposits included in the intmsive deposit type are those associated with intmsive or anatectic rocks of different chemical composition, eg, alaskite, granite, monzonite, peralkaline syenite, carbonatite, and pegmatite. Examples include the uranium occurrences in the porphyry copper deposits such as Bingham Canyon and Twin Butte in the United States, the Rossing Deposit in Namibia, and Ilimaussaq deposit in Greenland, Palabora in South Africa, and the deposits in the Bancroft area, Canada (15). 

Bingham Canyon Salt Lake, Utah Kennecott, Utah Copper Corp. j copper—molybdenum ore, concentrated and leached 245... 

An open-pit copper mine. This mine in Bingham Canyon, Utah, is 4 km in diameter and 0.8 km deep. It is the largest human-created hole on Earth. 

Intrusive Rossing deposit in Nambia, uranium occurrences in porphyry copper deposits as Bingham Canyon and Twin Buttle in USA, the Palabora in South Africa, deposits in the Bancroft area, Canada. 

This copper mine at Bingham Canyon, Utah, is the world s biggest open-pit mine. 

Hattori K. H. and Keith J. D. (2002) Contribution of mafic melt to porphyry copper minerahzation evidence from Mount Pinatubo, Phihppines, and Bingham Canyon, Utah, USA. Mineral. Dep. 36, 799—806. 

Borden R. (2001) Geochemical evolution of sulphide-bearing waste rock soils at the Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah. In Evolution and Remediation of Acid—Sulphate Systems at Reclaimed Mine Sites (eds. J. J. Donovan and A. W. Rose). Geological Society of London, pp. 15-21. 

Froth flotation is used to raise the low mineral concentrations in ores to concentrations that can be more economically processed. A concentration of 25-30% is suitable for economical smelting of copper. The froth flotation technique was originally developed in about 1910 to raise the copper concentrations of the strip-mined ores of Bingham Canyon, near Salt Lake City [9], and was further perfected for the differential separation of lead, zinc, and iron sulfides at Trail, B.C., at about the same time [10]. Flotation technologies are now widely used for separations such as the beneficiation of low grade Florida phosphate ores from 30-40% to 60-70% concentrations of calcium phosphate (BPL), and the separation of about 98% potassium chloride from sylvinite, a natural mixture of potassium and sodium chlorides. It is also used for bitumen separation from tar sand, removal of slate from coal, and removal of ink from repulped paper stock preparatory to the manufacture of recycled paper stock. More details of these separations are discussed in the relevant chapters. 

Bingham Canyon mine is the largest mining operation in the world, positioned upstream of the major population centre, Huelva. According to the EPA database Toxics Release Inventory which follows the release and potential release of chemicals and metals into the environment, the Rio Tinto mine is the largest source of the 650 toxic compounds tracked in this database and emitted into air, soil, and water. 

Important examples of such ores are Bingham Canyon in Utah, USA, Sierita in Arizona, USA, and most importantly Chuquicamata in Chile. This mine is situated in Northern Chile on the western slopes of the Andes. It has an open pit, 2 3 km, with a depth of 800 m. and is one of the biggest copper mines in the world. About 600 000 tonnes of ore are mined daily. 

Magmatogenic Ores. Ores in which the isotopic composition of ore lead is the same as that in the presumably related igneous source at the time of crystallization are good candidates for a magmatogenic origin. Data for this fingerprint are available in support of this mechanism. These ores are usually isotopically uniform with Pb/ " Pb< 19.5 and Pb/ Pb < 39. Examples (Fig. 22) are the ores at Butte, Montana (Doe et al., 1968), Bingham Canyon, Utah (Stacey et al., 1968), and the Nelson batholith, British Columbia (Reynolds, 1967). It must be... 

The Richest Hole on Earth Nature, Labor and the Politics of Metabolism at the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine... 

Standing at the overlook within the Bingham Canyon Mine, you can see, hear, and feel the... 

In this chapter, we examine what some call the richest hole on earth (Arrington Hansen, 1963) as the product of the labor process or the metabolic exchange between humans and nonhuman nature. The very materiality of such a massive megaengineering project necessarily entails profound social and ecological consequences for workers, local communities and the environment. The awesome magnitude of Bingham Canyon also ensures that the mine s past and... 

Fig. 21.1 Bingham Canyon Mine - The richest hole on earth. (Source Kennecott Cooper)...

The Henry Ford of Copper Mining Industrial Livelihoods in Bingham Canyon... 

This is not only a story of industrial ingenuity, but it represents a constant exchange with nature and the local ecology. The obvious natural basis of the Bingham Canyon copper mine is, of course, the massive scale of the deposit itself. In 1910 the exposed ore yielded a copper content of 1.54%, that is, they mined a total of 4.3 million tons of ore, removed 5.8 million tons of waste rock, to get at a mere 42,251 tons of copper (Arrington Hansen, 1963 90). The copper content of the deposit has definitely declined over the years, creating more waste rock, but not by much. Today, Kennecott Copper claims to extract copper at a rate of 0.6% for every 2,000 pounds of ore yields 12 pounds of copper (Benson, 2007). It seems that the more earth stripped and the further down the canyon reaches, the more the deposit keeps giving. 

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