Employing “self-sharpening tools” found in the work of theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’, and international law, William P. George brings mining to personal and collective moral awareness by “prospecting for ethics” at selected sites: (1) Butte, Montana, “the Richest Hill on Earth,” once bound to Chuquicamata, Chile, by a company that spanned two continents and nearly owned a state; (2) the tiny island nation of Nauru, called Pleasant Island until it was devastated by phosphate mining and the breaking of a sacred trust by foreign powers; (3) the deep seabed, governed by the United Nations Law of the Sea, a “constitution for the oceans” that regards much of the resource-rich seabed as humankind’s “common heritage”; (4) Africa, with its uranium mines but also its conflicts over what “being nuclear” means in the wake of colonialism, apartheid, and Hiroshima; and (5) mineral-rich asteroids, speeding through space, where mining rights are contested, even as space entrepreneurs look to become the world’s first trillionaires. George introduces readers to remarkable moral miners––the women of Butte and Chuquicamata, a World Court judge from Sri Lanka, the Rocket Boys of Coalwood, West Virginia, to name a few––and leads them to consider not only the morality of mining––what’s good and not so good about resource extraction––but also the mining of morality, a venture that Socrates called “the examined life.”

This book examines rare earth elements (REEs), materials, and metals that are critical to modern life. These serve as crucial ingredients in the latest technologies including electronics, electric motors, magnets, batteries, generators, energy storage systems (supercapacitors/pseudocapacitors), specialty alloys, and other emerging applications. REEs are used in various sectors including health care, transportation, power generation, petroleum refining, and consumer electronics. The Science of Rare Earth Elements: Concepts and Applications defines these elements, their histories, properties, and current and potential future applications across a wide range of industries across the world. It also discusses the environmental benefits, such as components in electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar applications, and energy storage systems. Conversely, the book also examines the liabilities of mining these REEs.

Polymer Concretes: Advanced Construction Materials provides a comprehensive study on polymer concrete (PC), discussing historical perspectives of its use, the classification and applications of PC, and the advantages and disadvantages of its use. Materials such as resin, aggregates, micro fillers, fibers, and nanofillers are systematically summarized, as well as their effects on PC. Also examined are the properties, fabrication methods, and the standards for testing the material properties, as well as the future outlook for PC applications. This book: Investigates the various properties of PC Covers the physical, mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, and environmental properties of PC Examines fabrication methods, standards for testing, and the future outlook for various applications The book is ideal for students taking related courses in Civil, Mechanical, Chemical, and Material Engineering. It also serves as a useful guide for researchers in the areas of concrete and construction materials, composites and nanocomposites, and advanced materials, as well as professionals working in fields such as construction, precast concrete products manufacture, transportation and road construction, architecture, and more.

This book outlines how Rio Tinto-one of the world's largest miners-redesigned and rebuilt relationships with communities after the rejection of the company during Bougainville's Civil War. Glynn Cochrane recalls how he and colleagues utilized their training as social anthropologists to help the company to earn an industry leadership reputation and competitive business advantage by establishing the case for long-term, on the ground, smoke-in-the-eyes interaction with people in local communities around the world, despite the appeal of maximal efficiency techniques and quicker, easier answers. Instead of using ready-made, formulaic toolkits, Rio Tinto relied on community practitioners to try to accommodate local preferences and cultural differences. This volume provides a step-by-step account of how mining companies can use social anthropological and ethnographic insights to design ways of working with local communities, especially in times of upheaval.

The first comprehensive work on one of the most important underground mining methods worldwide, Geotechnical Design for Sublevel Open Stoping presents topics according to the conventional sublevel stoping process used by most mining houses, in which a sublevel stoping geometry is chosen for a particular mining method, equipment availability, and work force experience. Summarizing state-of-the-art practices encountered during his 25+ years of experience at industry-leading underground mines, the author: Covers the design and operation of sublevel open stoping, including variants such as bench stoping Discusses increases in sublevel spacing due to advances in the drilling of longer and accurate production holes, as well as advances in explosive types, charges, and initiation systems Considers improvements in slot rising through vertical crater retreat, inverse drop rise, and raise boring Devotes a chapter to rock mass characterization, since increases in sublevel spacing have meant that larger, unsupported stope walls must stand without collapsing Describes methodologies to design optimum open spans and pillars, rock reinforcement of development access and stope walls, and fill masses to support the resulting stope voids Reviews the sequencing of stoping blocks to minimize in situ stress concentrations Examines dilution control action plans and techniques to back-analyze and optimize stope wall performance Featuring numerous case studies from the world-renowned Mount Isa Mines and examples from underground mines in Western Australia, Geotechnical Design for Sublevel Open Stoping is both a practical reference for industry and a specialized textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate mining studies.

As societies continue to grow and develop, the demand for energy has increased worldwide. In China, coal is still one of the principal energy resources and it is expected that more coal mining projects are needed in the future. As mining operations continue to increase their production rates and discover more ore reserves, mine safety issues have become more urgent. Even more than in the past there is a greater need to understand these issues better. Progress in Mine Safety Science and Engineering II discusses mine safety techniques and technologies, methods and approaches, as well as problems and issues. The contributions cover a wide range of topics: * Coal mine safety * Metal and non-metal mine safety * Mine product testing technology and safety symbol management * Mine rescue tools and techniques * Mine safety management and standardization * Mine safety science and theory * Occupational health and safety in mines * Petroleum and natural gas exploitation Progress in Mine Safety Science and Engineering II will be invaluable to academics and engineers interested or involved in mine safety issues.

This practical handbook of properties for soils and rock contains in a concise tabular format the key issues relevant to geotechnical investigations, assessments and designs in common practice. There are brief notes on the application of the tables. These data tables are compiled for experienced geotechnical professionals who require a reference document to access key information. There is an extensive database of correlations for different applications. The book should provide a useful bridge between soil and rock mechanics theory and its application to practical engineering solutions. The initial chapters deal with the planning of the geotechnical investigation and the classification of the soil and rock properties, after which some of the more used testing is covered. Later chapters show the reliability and correlations that are used to convert that data in the interpretative and assessment phase of the project. The final chapters apply some of these concepts to geotechnical design. The emphasis throughout is on application to practice. This book is intended primarily for practicing geotechnical engineers working in investigation, assessment and design, but should provide a useful supplement for postgraduate courses. It evolved from the need to have a "go to" reference book which has both breadth and depth of information to apply immediately to projects. To keep to a handbook size one has to compress/restrict details to a few key bullet points - but a comprehensive reference list provides the "appendix" for additional information if required. This 2nd edition keeps to that format but contains updated information and adjustments that take into account feedback received since initial publication.

The secret to streamlined scheduling of mining and civil engineering projects is a solid understanding of the basic concepts of rock cutting mechanics. Comparing theoretical values with experimental and real-world results, Mechanical Excavation in Mining and Civil Industries thoroughly explains various rock cutting theories developed for chisel, conical, disc, and button cutters. The authors provide numerical examples on the effect of independent variables on dependent variables, as well as numerical and solved examples from real-life mining and civil engineering projects using equipment such as: Hard- and soft-ground tunnel boring machines (TBMs) Roadheaders Shearers Ploughs Chain saws Raise borers Impact hammers Large-diameter drill rigs Microtunnel boring machines This book assists students and practicing engineers in selecting the most appropriate machinery for a specific job and predicting machine performance to ensure efficient extraction, and offers background information on rock cutting mechanics and different mechanical miners.

This book covers a wide range of topics relating to the health and wellbeing of the construction workforce. Based on more than a decade of work examining various aspects of workers' health and wellbeing, the book addresses a key topic in construction management: how the design of work environments, construction processes and organisation of work impact upon construction workers' physical and psychological health. Occupational health is a significant problem for the construction industry. However, the subject of health is usually treated as an afterthought in other books which emphasise safety issues. Traditional management approaches (focused on the prevention of accidents and injuries) are arguably ill-suited to addressing issues of workers' health and wellbeing. The evidenced informed approach in this book provides a rich analysis of how construction workers' health and wellbeing are impacted by working in the construction industry, and critical information about how organisations (and decision-makers within them) can create workplaces and practices that are supportive and enable construction workers to maintain healthy and productive working lives. Including chapter summaries and discussion questions to encourage student readers to reflect on and formulate their own viewpoints about the issues raised in each chapter, the book has the potential to be used as a textbook in undergraduate or postgraduate occupational health and safety, or construction management courses dealing with occupational health and safety. It could also be used as supplementary, recommended reading in undergraduate or postgraduate programs in architecture, engineering or management.

Juxtaposing literatures on urbanisation and mining at a time when small-scale artisanal as well as large-scale mining operations are transforming many African economies, this book focuses on the interplay of Sub-Saharan Africa mining and urbanisation in the context of global shifts in capital and labour flows. Classically, urbanisation has been identified with industrial expansion, but mining is a distinct subset of industrial activity, involving artisanal and large-scale mining. Case studies of a wide variety of countries with long historical experience of large-scale mining (South Africa, Ghana, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Botswana), as opposed to more recent experiences of artisanal mining (Mozambique, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone), reveal that the mining surge in some countries and the slow-down in others where mining was formerly dominant encompasses a wide range of urban outcomes. In view of the cyclical boom-and-bust nature of mining activity and the sector's dependence upon finite resources and exposure to world market fluctuations, this book probes settlement patterns and welfare dimensions of urban change associated with African mining amidst an unprecedented spiral in global mineral prices. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

• Major overhaul and restructure since previous edition • New coverage of hot topics including ethics, modern slavery and digital construction

The Design and Construction of Pitched Roofing is the definitive guide to obtaining successful results in pitched roofing construction. Written by a team of experts from the NFRC and the RTA, the representative groups in industry for roofing construction. This guide is fully in line with the latest best site practice, innovations and British and European Standards, to ensure readers are receiving the most up-to-date and accurate information available in the field. Based on actual teaching practice, the book is highly illustrated throughout to increase accessibility of the text for the reader in its exploration of the practical aspects of roofing. It also includes an extensive glossary of roofing terms for ease of reference. This first edition contains material detailing recent innovations in roofing, in the areas of roof components and envelope performance requirements. It brings together a comprehensive collection of the design, materials specification, and workmanship requirements to construct a successful pitched roof. Including: Up to date design, product and workmanship standards Current best site practice Advances in Health and Safety Current typical scope of works for a Roofing Contractor Broad knowledge of the overall building envelope performance. Specifically, the increasing insulation and air tightness requirements. Students following Diploma (Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced level) and apprenticeship routes, will find this book to be an invaluable reference source of information which will accompany them throughout their studies. Building professionals concerned with the design, detailing and specification of roofing will also find this book to be an essential reference.

The miners' lockout of 1926 was a pivotal moment in British twentieth-century history. Opening with the heady days of the general strike, it continued for seven months and affected one million miners. In County Durham, where almost three in every ten adult men worked in the coal industry, its impact was profound.
Hester Barron explores the way that the lockout was experienced by Durham's miners and their families. She investigates collective values and behavior, focusing particularly on the tensions between identities based around class and occupation, and the rival identities that could cut across the creation of a cohesive community. Highlighting the continuing importance of differences due to gender, age, religion, poverty, and individual hopes and aspirations, she nevertheless finds that in 1926, despite such differences, the Durham coalfield continued to display the solidarity for which miners were famed.
In response, Barron argues that the very concept of the "mining community" needs to be reassessed. Rather than consisting of an homogeneous occupational identity, she suggests that the essence of community lay in its ability to subsume and integrate other categories of identity. A collective consciousness was further grounded in a shared historical narrative that had to be continually reinforced.
It was the strength of such local solidarities that enabled both an exemplary regional response to the strike, and the ability to conceptualize such action within the wider framework of the national union. The 1926 Miners' Lockout provides crucial insights into issues of collective identity and collective action, illuminating wider debates about solidarity and fragmentation within working-class communities and cultures.

This book uses a multimethod approach to examine local experience of contemporary mining development in the Peruvian Andes, creating an understanding of the transformations that rural societies experience in this context. Mining is a major component of economic growth in many resource endowed countries, whilst also causing mixed social, cultural, and environmental effects. Most current literature on contemporary mining in Peru is largely focussed on conflict; however, in this text, the author takes a differing approach by examining the experiences of families in the vicinity of Rio Tinto's La Granja exploration copper project, Northern Peru, an area with great significance due to the mining investment and development, which has taken place over the past 25 years. The book first provides a critical discussion about production of space theories, and debates on spatial mobility, highlighting their relevance to understanding large-scale mining developments, especially in the Peruvian Andes. The following chapters analyze spatial transformations mining development has prompted, focusing on four axes: access to space, production, mobility, and representations of space. A comprehensive narrative is constructed drawing on diverse voices and perspectives, including those of family heads and their partners, local leaders, company employees, and social scientists. The book concludes by discussing how the findings challenge some of the current accounts of the social effects of mining developement on rural communities and pose significant implications for sustainable development programs and place-based practices. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book will appeal to a wide audience including geographers, social anthropologists, and social scientists interested in the social effects of mining as well as researchers interested in current Latin American Studies and Rural Development.

Most dam accidents with hydroelectric plants are due to under-dimensioning of the maximum floods of spillway design, causing extravasation and dam breaks (this occurs in 23% of the accidents). This work highlights the relationship between spillway design and potential dam failure and other important aspects of these structures and presents the methodology of design based on the international experience on the subject. The book covers river basin studies and floods (the geology, geomorphology, hydrology, hydraulics, and layouts of the works). Further, spillway function, capacity and design flood, layouts, or arrangements, of hydroelectric works and types of spillways are treated in the book. Finally, the book discusses examples of dams that broke due to insufficient spillway capacity. The book is intended for engineers and the companies that design dams and power plants around the world, as well as students in dam and hydraulic engineering. In short, people interested in producing electricity that is clean and potentially cheaper than other sources.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of each aspect of offshore operations including conventional methods of operations, emerging technologies, legislations, health, safety and environment impact of offshore operations. The book starts by coverage of notable offshore fields across the globe and the statistics of present oil production, covering all types of platforms available along with their structural details. Further, it discusses production, storage and transportation, production equipment, safety systems, automation, storage facilities and transportation. Book ends with common legislation acts and comparison of different legislation acts of major oil/gas producing nations. The book is aimed at professionals and researchers in petroleum engineering, offshore technology, subsea engineering, and Explores the engineering, technology, system, environmental, operational and legislation aspects of offshore productions systems Covers most of the subsea engineering material in a concise manner Includes legislation of major oil and gas producing nations pertaining to offshore operations (oil and gas) Incorporates case studies of major offshore operations (oil and gas) accidents and lessons learnt Discusses environment impact of offshore operations

Since 1984 the EURO-C conference series (Split 1984, Zell am See 1990, Innsbruck 1994, Badgastein 1998, St Johann im Pongau 2003, Mayrhofen 2006, Schladming 2010) has provided a forum for academic discussion of the latest theoretical, algorithmic and modelling developments associated with computational simulations of concrete and concrete structures. Computational Modelling of Concrete Structures includes recent research advancements on the applicability and robustness of methods and models for the analysis of complex concrete, reinforced concrete and/or pre-stressed concrete structures in engineering practice. The book covers both computational mechanics and computational modelling aspects of the analysis and design of concrete structures: * Constitutive and Multiscale Modelling of Concrete * Advances in Computational Modelling * Time Dependent and Multiphysics Problems * Modelling of Concrete Structures * Hazard, Risk and Safety Computational Modelling of Concrete Structures is of special interest to researchers in computational concrete mechanics, and to industry experts in complex nonlinear simulations of concrete structures.

It has been almost fifty years since the first papers on the application of reliability theory to mining problems were published in the United States. Developing rapidly in the late 1950s and 1960s, reliability theory quickly found a wide application in mining engineering. Ten years later "Terotechnology" became popular in the UK and at the same time its counterpart "Theory of Exploitation" was introduced in Central Europe. Similar to reliability theory, they both found wide application in mining. Since then a lot of articles have been published in many countries concerning these scopes of considerations but a wider elaboration on this topic was still lacking. This book gives an explanation of the mutual relationships between terotechnology and the theory of exploitation, and presents the fundamentals of the theory of exploitation and its role in relation to mining engineering where mine machines and machinery systems are concerned. Further, statistical diagnostics, exploitation processes of machines, reliability and its models, and the methods of modelling and analysis of the processes of changes of states are treated.

A significant part of the book deals with cyclical systems that are in common use. A variety of models are considered supported by many case studies. The last chapter deals with combined systems operating in a mixed manner. Finally, an analyses of the influence of the inhomogeneity of a different nature in a shovel-truck type system is given.
The examples presented in the book are based on the data coming from operation of pieces of equipment from different mines and different countries.

This book will be of particular interest to students, academics and lecturers of mining faculties and schools of mining. Mining Engineers and other professionals in the mining industry will also find this book of interest. Finally, students in mathematics will find practical applications and problem solving in this book.

When it comes to using reinforcements to grant better mechanical performance to soils, geosynthetics, one of the newest groups of building materials, have become mandatory in almost all works of infrastructure, draining applications, waterproofing, paving, erosion control and soil reinforcement. This volume presents the basic mechanisms associated with soil-reinforcement interaction and a rational design method for reinforced soil-retaining structures. Concepts are described with didactic and theoretical rigor, fulfilling the practical needs of engineers involved in the design, construction and inspection of reinforced soil structures.

This book reviews the development of research into the explosive loading of structures, mainly since the beginning of the twentieth century. Major contributions in the fields of measurement, analysis and prediction are discussed. Dynamic loading from conventional high explosives is examined, as well as the effects of liquid propellant, dust, gas, vapour, and fuel/air explosions. Subjects include blast in tunnels, underground and underwater explosions, pressure measurement and blast stimulation. Explosive effects on civil buildings, civil bridges, aircraft and ships are summarized, including the estimation of residual strength. The concluding passages refer to structural safety and reliability.

Since prehistoric times, the process of cutting rock to make millstones has been one of the most important industries in the world. Different civilizations and cultures have produced their own styles of grinding stones, which have been used in mills to process wheat, corn, and other grains into the flour and meal that was necessary to feed a growing population. The earliest rotary millstones, known as querns, were turned by human power. Later in history, larger millstones were manufactured that required animal, water, or wind power to turn them. These larger millstones required less human effort and ground greater quantities of grain, but also required regular maintenance and replacement. As a result, millstone quarries increased greatly in number and size in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the largest quarry sites extending as far as nearly a half-mile square to about 12 square miles.The first part of this book compiles information on the millstone industry in the United States, which dates between the mid - 1600s and the mid - 1900s. Primarily based on archival research and brief accounts published in geological and historical volumes, it focuses on conglomerate, granite, flint, quartzite, gneiss, and sandstone quarries in different regions and states, along with a general overview of the rise and fall of the American millstone industry. The second part focuses on the millstone quarrying industry in Europe and other areas. Of the European millstone industry, the quarries of France, Germany, and Great Britain are most extensively documented, although the quarries of Albania, Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland are also addressed. The book includes 84 photographs, 16 tables, and a helpful glossary of specialized and technical terms.

This book is a direct outgrowth of classes that the authors gave over a period of three decades to a university audience taking a Mineral Beneficiation course as a major that included coal processing and utilization. It is designed to be used as a student's (or layman's) first introduction to coal processing and utilization, motivating the concepts before illustrating them by means of concrete situations. As such, this book gives an integrated overview of coal processing and utilization along with clean coal technology, presenting all the basic principles, theory and practice in a systematic way. Every topic covered is dealt with in a self-explanatory manner so that any new reader may find this book interesting and easy to understand. The book makes available the hard core of fundamentals of coal processing and utilization in a form which is general enough to meet the needs of many and yet is unburdened by excess baggage best discussed in research journals. The salient feature is that all the technical terminology used in this book has been sufficiently explained in order to allow the reader to understand the concepts effectively without needing to consult additional literature. Problems are introduced not so much to be solved as to be tackled. Some of them are included to lay the ground work for the subsequent theory and will help the readers in teaching, research and operating plants. Overall, this book will be of interest to professionals and engineers in the fields of energy, mining, mineral, metallurgical and geological engineering, as well as to engineering geologists and earth sciences professionals.

The aim of process calculations is to evaluate the performance of minerals and coal processing operations in terms of efficiency of the operation, grade of the final products and recovery of the required constituents. To meet these requirements, in-depth detailed calculations are illustrated in this book. This book is designed to cover all the process calculations. The method and/or steps in process calculations have been described by taking numerical examples. Process calculations illustrated in a simple and self explanatory manner based on two basic material balance equations will allow the reader to understand the contents thoroughly. Inclusion of elaborate process calculations in every chapter is the highlight of this book. This book is unique and devoted entirely to the process calculations with sufficient explanation of the nature of the calculations. This book will prove useful to all: from student to teacher, operator to engineer, researcher to designer, and process personnel to plant auditors concerned with minerals and coal processing.

This comprehensive technical book on highwall mining covers theory and practice coupled with practical examples and design aspects. It contains eight extensive chapters elaborating broad-spectrum functionalities of highwall mining and its operational aspects, covering world scenario, economic potential, methods of coal extraction, design methodology including empirical web pillar design, numerical modelling for stress analysis, safety factor for web pillars, panel and barrier design, small-and large-scale numerical modelling, multiple seam interaction and design, coal web pillar strength, equivalent width concept, laboratory testing, new web pillar strength formula, effect of weak bands in coal seam, slope stability, safety and ground monitoring, hazards and regulatory requirements, case examples, norms and guidelines for practice. It also summarizes the results of research carried out by the CSIR Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CSIR-CIMFR), India and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia on the subject. The book will equip readers in understanding the complex, multiple seam scenarios for highwall mining, and its design for maximum coal recovery from any given site with better economics, which will aid the mining companies in extracting locked-up coal following the safety norms to avoid hazards and minimise instability issues. A large number of case studies is included to illustrate the application of numerical modelling for prior estimation and viability of highwall mining operations under varying geomining conditions. The book will be of interest to professionals and academics in the field of mining engineering specifically, but will also interest civil, geomechanical and geological engineers as well as rock mechanics professionals.

An examination of silver mining and society in Colonial Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating upon Zacatecas, the centre of the principal silver-mining region. In the first half of the book, the author describes the discovery of the mines, the establishment of the town, its role in the northward advance of the Spanish occupation of Mexico, its administration, and the sources of its supplies of essential food and materials. The remainder of the book is devoted to an analysis of the mining industry of the Zacatecas district. The author discusses techniques, labour and raw materials. He also provides statistics for silver production, suggesting reasons for their fluctuation, and explores sources of capital for the industry. Based on detailed study of archives in both Spain and Mexico, Dr Bakewell is able to provide an entirely new chronology for the development of Zacatecas and the Mexican maining industry up to 1700.