Cyanide Wins Over Crowds at TMS

摘要

A symposium on cyanide was very well attended and very successful at the Annual Meeting of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS). Held in New Orleans in the week of February 11-15, the four day symposium - "Cyanide: Social, Industrial and Economic Aspects" - presented forty papers on a wide range of concerns. Superbly organized by Dr. Courtney Young, Dr. Corby Anderson and Dr. Larry Twidwell, all from Montana Tech., the symposium was co-sponsored by the Extraction and Processing Division, Waste Treatment & Minimization Committee and Precious Metals Committee of the TMS; by the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME); by the Northwest Mining Association; and by the IPMI. Presenters came from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Africa, as well as the United States.The symposium began with presentations of the dark side - the association of cyanide with catastrophic failures of tailings dams in Guyana and Romania, and with environmental damage in Littleton, Colorado. That association has resulted in a strong political reaction against cyanide, and the outright prohibition of cyanide leaching in Montana. The first day ended with a panel discussion of the future of cyanide, with experts representing industry, academia, and the Sierra Club leading a large audience in spirited exchange. John Bullock represented the IPMI on the panel. The consensus of all, even including the Sierra Club, was that cyanide, while highly toxic as free CN~- and HCN, had received a reputation worse than it deserved. It was noted that over a century cyanide has never caused the death of a miner, and can be safely managed. A further consensus was that management of cyanide still had room for improvement, sometimes a great deal of room.