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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Phys.org [phys.org]:

There is growing interest in extracting minerals from mining waste, with conferences [re-mine.eu] held in the new area of remining in Europe and new prospecting ventures under way in Australia exploring mine waste.

The first to invest in this secondary prospecting was the Queensland government, which has funded sampling [ausimm.com] across 16 sites. Early results have found cobalt deposits [qld.gov.au] rich enough to draw overseas investment [jogmec.go.jp].

New South Wales has recently launched [bloomberg.com] a similar program, while work is under way by Geoscience Australia [ga.gov.au], the University of Queensland and RMIT to produce the first-ever atlas of mine waste in Australia.

Does mining the waste make financial sense in and of itself, or is it simply meant to assuage environmental and political concerns?

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