Gold Prices

[iain]

winter - when it comes to dingleberries you're a regular 49er.

this is a thread on gold _prices_. Go search for your golden showers elsewhere.

[catbirdseat]

Yes, I read Harry Major's Monte Cristo book recently. His book makes no mention of this telluride but then the book did come out in '77.

Tellurium is in the same group in the periodic table as sulfur and selenium. My mining expert friend claims that it is common in both the cascades and rockies for sulfides to be found closer to the surface and tellurides at greater depths. Tellurides cannot be smelted, that is reduced, by just roasting. They must be chemically treated. Supposedly 100 years ago, the gold was getting dumped into the river because their assay method could not detect it.

 

There is a process for reducing tellurides which involves ordinary table salt. My limited understanding of the process is that a solution of sodium chloride is electrolyzed to produce sodium chlorate. The chlorate extracts the gold as Au(I) into solution. The gold is then easily precipitated as the metal by reaction with zinc chloride.

 

Here's another odd mining story that I believe to be a tall tale. Supposedly there is a deep pool of mercury behind Grand Coulee Dam under Lake Roosevelt. Furthermore, it reportedly generates so much pressure against the dam that there is concern of it blowing out the footings. There have indeed been reports of pools of mercury in the upper Columbia River and tributaries.

[Fairweather]

The story seems to indicate that the mercury pools are from years of mining along the tributaries that feed Lake Roosevelt and the use of mercury/gold extraction methods. Are you saying there is a natural-cause theory that would explain the mercury pools? The story was dated 7/01. I wonder if any more information has come to light since.

 

I've seen stories about the horrible, ongoing mercury contamination and gold mining practices in the Amazon Basin. Imagine the mercury pools that will form downstream in the years to come, and the human toll being paid even now.

[catbirdseat]

I'm told that most of the mercury simply leached out of the ores in abandoned mines and from tailings dumped into the river, mostly by the Canadians (the Okanogan River). Relatively little comes from mercury used for processing of gold. That stuff is pretty expensive. They don't lose it if they can help it.

[Thinker]

I'm not extremely familiar with the area being discussed, but in general, tons of mercury were lost into rivers that were extensively placer mined (dredge boats with huge conveyor belts). It's not uncommon to find 'pools' of mercury in depressions in the bedrock in rivers mined this way. The Powder River in NE Oregon is a prime example of this.

 

Natural sources of mercury do exist, and early prospectors often followed mercury in streams and rivers to it's source and started mining.

 

Again, I'm not familiar with the specific geology or mining operations in the area being discussed.

[Thinker]

Actually, I spoke too soon. I should have read the article before posting. I stand by what I say about mercury, but I am familiar with the Lake Roosevelt project area.

 

I've actually visited and sampled some of the mine sites in the area, on a couple Patty Stone actually came with and observed. Most of what we found at our sites was lead....huge hits of lead in soils. The refinery in Canada dumped tons and tons of lead slag into the Columbia just before it flowed into the USA. I sampled at an old lead mill in Colville, WA where we found huge levels of lead...to the point that the county health department moved renters with children off the site the day after we informed them of the analytical results.

 

It wouldn't surprise me to find mercury at the mills in the area that processed gold ore.

[cj001f]

I was thinking of arsenic in the classic apocathery poison sense, as in Flaubert's Madame Bovary where she tries to kill herself with arsenic to end the perceived pain of her existance and ironically ends up dying in a horrible and painful way. or something like that.

or in the manor of a Cary Grant Hollywood movie?

[Dru]

correct spelling is "apothecary"

 

by the way, you can use arsenic to kill syphilis. the dose fatal to the syph is not fatal to human.

[catbirdseat]

Arsenic is now being used to treat some forms of leukemia. CTI sells it's arsenic trioxide formulation as Trisenox .