SUDBURY PHYSICS LESSON

SUDBURY PHYSICS LESSON

Miners will soon carve out a 10-storey cavern at the bottom of Inco Ltd.’s Creighton mine in Sudbury, Ont. Into this excavation will be placed a massive 12-metre-diameter acrylic “bottle” containing 1,000 tonnes of radiation-free heavy water. And when 6,000 light sensors are strategically arrayed around this bottle, the designers, builders and funders of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory should get a glimpse of one of nature’s most fundamental, most abundant, and yet most elusive of particles — the sub-atomic neutrino.

Trillions upon trillions of neutrinos are produced by stars. Tracking their paths through the universe is another matter. It requires such installations as the $61-million Sudbury detector. Once completed (five years from now), scientists will see tiny flashes of light where the neutrinos, one of nature’s fundamental building blocks, collide with heavy water particles.

“The impact of this project on both particle physics and astrophysics will be enormous,” says physicist Christopher Waltham of the University of British Columbia (UBC). Waltham and a UBC research team will design and test the light-sensitive sensors. Also involved in the project are: the National Research Council; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; Industry, Science and Technology Canada, the provincial government of Ontario; and the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Canadian, U.S. and British scientists will take part.

UNDER THE CARBON COVERS

New diamond drilling, a meticulous drill log search and airborne geophysics will soon yield a 1:250,000-scale geological map revealing the Precambrian Shield buried beneath thick Paleozoic limestone, south of Flin Flon, Man. The joint undertaking by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the Manitoba Geological Services Branch (GSB) could lead explorationists to Flin-Flonesque greenstone finds that, until now, have been obscured by the carbonate blanket.

Finding orebodies beneath limestone as thick as 150 m is not impossible. Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting unearthed the Namew Lake orebody under 125 m of carbonaceous material. Namew was spotted with a special airborne technique developed by HBM&S.

The GSC/GSB map should ease the work of targeting promising rock formations.

STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM FUND

While the mining industry has long since extricated itself from the 1980 recession, budding engineers still seem leery of the resource roller coaster.

“We are concerned with the inadequacy of the numbers of graduates in mining and mining-related fields,” says Klaus Konigsman, chairman of the Canadian Mineral Industry Education Foundation (CMIF).

For the past two decades and more, the CMIF has eased the way for engineering students to enter mining disciplines. The group offers scholarships of up to $2,000 to undergraduates and as much as $5,000 to a much smaller group of post-graduates.

In the current academic year, it is assisting 21 in mining engineering, 15 in metallurgy, four in mechanical/electrical and two post-grads. The total 1989/90 cost will be $83,500.

Konigsman says his organization aims to increase the number of mechanical, electrical and process control scholarship students, because of the burgeoning high-technology aspect of mining.

“We can’t have a high-technology industry and not have these types of people available,” Konigsmann says.

MAC LOVES GST

The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) embraces the Goods and Services Tax proposed by the federal government. Studies show the tax will not harm the industry, according to the MAC. In fact, it may prove a minor boon. However, you know and we know that all of us will pay more in taxes under GST than we are paying now. It is a universal law that any tax, once promulgated, must rise relentlessly. But let us be sacrificial and accept that the GST will pay down the nation’s outstanding debt, temporarily pegged at $320 billion, but fattening splendidly at a $20-billion-per-year clip.

The following is offered for perspective: Annual inerest charges on the national debt amount to $33 billion. The Canadian mining industry exported $35 billion worth of crude and processed mineral commodities in 1988.

IN SEARCH OF FORMER MINES

The government of Saskatchewan needs help in locating abandoned mines in the province. The Abandoned Mine Remedial Work Program, initiated in 1988, has located 377 abandoned coal mines so far. However, the Environment and Public Safety Ministry says there are more than 500 former mines, mostly coal producers.

Reclamation work to date has been completed on 22 mines. The program continues this year in southern Saskatchewan.