海底熱水鉱床開発の今後の展望について

摘要

In Japan, the Basic Act on Ocean Policy provides a basic outline of matters regarding the ocean and was promulgated in July, 2007. Following the Act, in March 2008, the Cabinet introduced the "Basic Plan on Ocean Policy", to promote measures concerning the ocean specifically and overall. In particular this legislation defines clearly the plan for the commercialization of sea-floor massive sulfides (SMS), that have not yet been commercialized, within 10 years.In March 2009 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) introduced its "Plan for the Devel-opment of Marine Energy and Mineral Resources" for commercializing SMS based on the Basic Plan for Ocean Policy. METI is also promoting various approaches for commercialization (METI, 2009). From 2008, Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), contracted by METI, began a survey and technological development program in cooperation with national institutes, universities and private companies for the development of the SMS based the Basic Plan. The examination of four differ-ent fields: the evaluation of the amount of the resource, environmental assessment, mining technology, and processing & smelting technology, is concurrently promoted aiming for commercialization now. Without the development cases, the commercialization of SMS within 10 years is very challenging. More-over, as the SMS is developed, settlements of social challenges such as facilitating consensus-building efforts among various stake-holders and the tailing disposal site issues are required.This paper introduces the JOGMEC's activities and issues for SMS commercial mining in Japanese wa-ters.