Samrådsunderlag – Project Viken

The Canadian mining company EU Energy Corp. is planning to apply for opening several open-cast mines in Viken in Jämtland after years of exploration, drilling and analyzing the drill core samples. A good overview regarding EU Energy Corp.’s whereabouts and response to these can be found in the web-based newspaper Grus & Guld (published March 18, 2019).

An application to Bergsstaten to open a mine has to be accompanied by an Environmental Impact Assessment. According to Swedish law, the first step for a company is therefore to consult various stakeholders and ask them to provide input to what the Environmental Impact Assessment should encompass. For this, a company sends out a ‘samrådsunderlag‘ to all concerned parties. It is not easy to translate the term ‘samrådsunderlag’ into English. Maybe one could translate it as providing a basis for joint consultations.

EU Energy Corp. submitted such a joint consultation document last year in October. On the Internet I could only find responses to this document by Östersund municipality (dated February 5th, 2019) and the Jämtland-Härjedalen region (dated March 4th, 2019). There are probably more, but I could just not find them.

Let’s start with saying that EU Energy Corp.’s ‘samrådsunderlag’ is a meager document. It states that 152 drill holes have been made and analyzed to delineate the area where the highest vanadium content in the Alum shale can be found. See the figure below.

Figure 2 from EU Energy Corp.’s samrådsunderlag, 2018-10-12 delineating the area in question for opening open-cast mines in Alum shale to extract vanadium.

The company further writes that it plans to open four open-cast mines that will be about 30-35 m deep. From these mines around 3.7 million tonnes of Alum shale with a vanadium pentoxide content of about 0.24% can be extracted. Although the company’s focus is on vanadium, they note that other metals are present in the Alum shale, among others, molybdenum, copper, nickel, zinc and uranium. But there is no mentioning whether there are plans to also extract any of these other metals.

The glacial sediments and the limestone that overlie the alum shale will, according to EU Energy Corp.’s ‘samrådsunderlag’, be used to construct a dam for the planned tailings pond (called ‘sandmagasin’ in Swedish), where the rest material (i.e. what is left after extraction of the desired metals) will be stored. The company writes that the material that will be stored in the tailings dam (sandmagasin) will later be used to refill mine 1. The same procedure will be employed for the other mines.

The newspaper Grus & Guld (March 18, 2019) published this overview figure showing where the four mines, the tailings dam and the processing plant will be located and where the overburden, i.e. the limestone and the sediments above the Alum shale will be stored. Downloaded from:
https://issuu.com/grusoguld/docs/g_g_webbtidning

To extract vanadium from the Alum shale, a processing plant will need to be built within the area (see figure above – Anrikningsverk). Processing the Alum shale will likely include crushing, grinding and closed leaching with various chemicals. The processes to be used are – according to EU Energy Corp., however still under development. But – it would actually be crucial to know which processes are going to be employed and which chemical leaching technique/s. Because it will be the crushed and processed Alum shale, i.e. the remains after extraction of vanadium that are being deposited in the tailings pond, together with the water used during processing. And these remains are not just simple crushed rock fragments, but rather a toxic cocktail. What will end up in the tailings and what will eventually be moved back into the hole created by a mine is thus not a trivial issue.

EU Energy Corp. also writes that overflow water from the tailings ponds will be discharged into local water bodies. It would be interesting to know what the composition of this overflow water is … how will it impact local water bodies, the aquatic flora and fauna and the groundwater? Maybe the statement by EU Energy Corp. that water from the tailings could change the water chemistry in nearby waters could give a hint of what the future might look like.

Under ‘future environmental impacts’, EU Energy Corp. mention that the landscape will be changed, but that the mines will be filled with the rest material from the tailings (sandmagasin) and covered by moraine. They also note, among others, that the groundwater level will be lowered, that vibration and noise will occur and that the air quality could be influenced by mining dust.

Groundwater is in the minds of many people, especially after the dry summer of 2018. But what is much less known is that vanadium, and especially vanadium pentoxide, is toxic. Se also here and here for more information regarding vanadium’s impact on health.

Berg municipality and the Jämtland-Härjedalen region responded to EU Energy Corp.’s joint consultation document (samrådsunderlag) and have listed a large number of points that need to be addressed in the Environmental Impact Assessment. Most of the points raised are kept fairly general, but this will none the less mean that a comprehensive and detailed Environmental Assessment Report needs to be presented by the company.

When I talked to a geology colleague with experience form the mining industry and asked why municipalities respond in such a general way and do not ask very specific questions when it comes to for example, the geology and geochemistry of the rocks, the composition and toxicity of the tailings, or the hydrological impact on groundwater, lakes and river systems, the answer was: municipalities often do not have the expertise, means and finances to check if what a company writes in respect to geology, geochemistry, hydrology, etc. is entirely correct. Municipalities often don’t have the money to employ another independent consultancy agency to perform the necessary analyses that would allow verifying and controlling a mining company. I have no idea if this is the case in general, but I would really be interested to know if this is a reality that many municipalities are confronted with.

In my world, i.e. in the research world, it is not possible to publish data that cannot be verified (although this happens now and then!). The usual way is that manuscripts are reviewed and scrutinized by colleagues before they can be published and data sets that accompany a manuscript are made available online. In this way other researchers can use the data sets and can also check on what the interpretations are based on.

In theory this scrutinizing should also work for a mining company, which submits an Environmental Assessment Report. It is just not clear for me which independent institution will scrutinize these documents. Bergsstaten and the Geological Survey of Sweden may be regarded by some as independent institutions. However their close link to the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation does not make them independent institutions.

From my scientific perspective I would for example expect to find the following details in an Environmental Assessment report by EU Energy Corp. in respect to their planned mines in Viken:

How will the mine look like? How many tonnes of shale will actually need to be processed to obtain the desired quantity of vanadium? How wide and deep will each mine need to be to extract XX tonnes of shale? How stable will the mine be? Have the consequences of a lowered groundwater level on the local and regional water supply been demonstrated?

A detailed description of the processing plant and the complete leaching process: which chemicals will be used and in which quantities during the different leaching steps; which elements will be extracted other than vanadium; what is the exact chemical composition of the leaching residue to be deposited in the tailings? How will the residues react to weathering and which chemical elements will be released and in which quantity? Has each leaching step been tested scientifically in the laboratory and in the field?

Tailings dam: location, stability and size of the tailings dam; amount and chemical composition of the overflowing water; a hydrological model including all chemical elements showing how the overflowing water will change the chemistry of nearby lakes and rivers and which consequences this will have.

The Alum shale does not only contain vanadium, but a range of different elements, such as for example barium, cobalt, chromium, copper, lanthanum, molybdenum, niobium, nickel, scandium, tin, tungsten, zinc and uranium. If none of these is extracted by leaching, they will all end up in the tailings dam and eventually in the infill of the mine. This would mean that the infill will be composed of several of the so-called innovation-critical minerals and metals – what a waste of time and money!

The infill will also contain uranium. It is well known that the Alum shale in general is rich in uranium and that parts of the shale are very rich in uranium. Weathering releases uranium and broken Alum shale is even more susceptible to weathering than intact bedrock. Just covering the infill, i.e. the processed Alum shale, with moraine is not the best solution as has been demonstrated for Kvarntorp in Närke.

It surprises me over and over again that scientifically unsupported statements that will have enormous environmental impacts and other consequences can pass through without being thoroughly scrutinized. But let’s wait and see what EU Energy Corp.’s Environmental Assessment Report will contain. I am looking forward to reading it.