Salt mining, mechanical

Over the last twenty years, significant research and development has been performed concerning the ultimate disposal mechanism for radioactive waste. In 1957, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that deep beds of bedded salt be considered as potential locations for the disposal of radioactive waste materials. Following this recommendation a program of research and development was undertaken by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEG) to explore this approach. The high point of this program was the operation of Project Salt Vault in an abandoned salt mine in Lyons, Kansas. 

Salt mining is a large-scale specialized activity. Few chlorine producers mine salt or have much control over the process. Section 7.1.2 therefore gives only a brief review of the subject of mechanical mining of rock salt. Solar salt production, on the other hand, is closely tied to chlorine plants in some parts of the world. A fuller description of its production seems appropriate and appears in Section 7.1.3. 

Five salt mines constitute the salt source in Romania. Each time has a mechanically operated iodization unit. The levels of iodine are monitored by a laboratory at each mine. 

Apart from coal mining, mining is carried out for gold, anhydrite and gypsum, iron ore, non-ferrous ores and rock salt etc. Copper ores are usually compact and mechanically strong and are broken-up by blasting before they can be removed. 

Solution Mining and Mechanical Evaporation. Bedded and domal salt deposits are solution-mined by drilling weUs into halite... 

Rode mechanical stability. The main potential hazard to the integrity of an underground repository has its roots in rock mechanical failures. The stability of the repository depends on many factors, such as the volume of the rooms relative to the pillars. Convergence of rooms due to the plasticity of the salt and enhanced by the elevated temperature may cause stresses within the rock salt. It is therefore important that a repository at least for HLW should be built in a salt formation not mined before. Moreover, only the space required for a minimum number of years should be mined at the same time, and every room used up should be backfilled with crushed salt. On the other hand, convergence will help to eliminate open space in the rock salt quickly after rooms have been backfilled and will thereby be beneficial. 

T he citrate process for the recovery of elemental sulfur from sulfur dioxide emissions in waste gas was conceived by Bureau of Mines investigators at the Salt Lake City Metallurgy Research Center in their initial laboratory research reported in 1970 (I). This work led to a scale-up of the process to a 400 cu ft/min (CFM) pilot unit which began treating reverberatory furnace gas at a copper smelter in Arizona in November 1970. While a series of mechanical difficulties allowed only... 

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