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Show Business I r' V wr 1 Sunday, October V ' jf - 6, 1985 w ' 1 Page t )T"J Down the Street M'' t Section F v J nVvOtiri'Aik 71'.. J x , c cJ-U-vui- - Carlin Mining Co. Looks as Good as Gol ff Ore trucks move in clockwork cycle between mine and mill at Newmont Mining Corps operations just north of Carlin, Nev. Newmont has invested $130 million in new facilities here where it began operations 20 years ago when at $35 an ounce. The additional development will make Newmont the nations largest gold producer in 1986. gold was By Robert H Woody Tribune Business Editor The hamlet of CARLIN, NEV. Carlin, just off Interstate 80 and the Union Pacifics Southern Pacific Tracks Carlin ore is ground in these giant mills before going to cyanidation treat- ment. At left: Dennis J. Bushta, direc- tor of employee relations-safety- . James L. Steers operates mills from electronic console. The terminals give instant data on flow rates and condition of equipment. 1 Use of open pit techniques using large shovels and trucks to scoop and deliver ore to mill was secret to d invisible micron- getting at the size gold of the Carlin, Nev. area. Concept had genesis in the copper industry in Bingham at Newmont began use at Carlin in 1965. turn-of-centur- y. widely-disperse- Tribune Photoo ) I by Hubert H. 210 air miles west of Salt Lake City, is a long shot from being a 1 Johannesburg But when Carlin Gold Mining Co's additional production is added to the overall capacity of the parent New-- 1 mont Gold Mining Corp, New York, next year, it will make Carlin, with 345 000 troy ounces, the largest single gold producer in the United States, and New mont, with combined 500,000 ounces of production, one of the largest producers in the world after South Africa and the Soviet Union As top U. S producer, Carlin will nudge out Homestake Mining Co, Lead, S D , for years No. 1 in the country and on the North American continent South Africa produced a whopping 683 3 metric tons 22,097,000 troy ounces in 1984 compared with 71 5 2,312,000 troy ounces metric tons produced by operations in the United States The Soviets are believed to have produced about 8 6 million troy ounces in 1983, or about a third of the South African production There are 14 7 trov ounces m a pound compared to 16 standard ounces in the pound Newmont's takeover of the Nol spot in U S production will have come after it completes a full year's production at its new Gold Quarry Mine and No 2 Mill and leach facility just four miles north of Carlin The mill is designed to produce 170,000 ounces yearly from the nearby Maggie Creek and Gold Quarry Mines You can see the mine terraces against the tawny Nevada hills as you drive the interstate John Schilling, director state geologist of the Nevada Bureau of Mines & Geology, says Nevada s promin-anc- e in gold mining is based on these factors Gold prices have increased tenfold or threefold if you consider the in 10 years impact of inflation Carlin, which opened 20 years ago, was based on the economics of the laid down over millions of years The process is under way even today. The gold as such is invisible to the eye, to be seen only through an electron microscope And usually it occurs in combination with silver You could go out with burro, pick and shovel, and pan your heart out without gathemg enough to pay for a load of pipe tobacco The secret is mass mining, milling and processing, using giant shovels and trucks to strip the readily acces- sible surface deposits, and grinding and processing the ore in huge -controlled mills. As for the milling and processing Dont look for smokestacks or but for plumes A mdoern gold mill such necessities as storage bins and looks much more conveyor belts l.ke a factory than one of those traditional smokey milling and smelting complexes that once dotted the mountain ranges and valleys of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah the Very little pyrometellurgy is inapplication of fire and heat volved but for the casting of gold bar Most of the processing involves hythat is, the discreet drometallurgy use of chemicals in a closed circuit Cyanide powder is great for doing in ones rich uncle or political enemy But in solution for recovering gold, it has little environmental consequence. And any fugitive cyanide quickly becomes a harmless oxide historicalNevadas emergence ly it was called the Silver State as the nation's leading gold state comes more than a century after a short-liverobust gold and silver epoch that helped finance the Civil War and made it an attractive addition to the Union Carlin, which opened 20 years ago, marked Nevadas renaissance as a gold producer And it was mass mining and milling techniques developed in the copper industry that was the genesis Ironically those methods evolved from the pioneering done by the Daniel C Jackling 80 years ago at Bingham, Utah, which wa to become one of the world's largest producers of copper But copper prices have not gone up tenfold since 1934 when the United States pegged the price of gold to $35 an ounce, or since 1972 when the Bret-to- n Woods agreements began to crumble and the price of gold was freed Inundated by world overproduction of copper, the trade handicap of S U Gold long pegged the strong dollar and the impact of is now selling in the $320 range recession, the American copper inStrip mining of surface deposits dustry is in shambles has replaced the traditional mining And Kennecotts once mighty Bingof underground vein deposits and ham open pit, whose byproduct gold s stream-bedof and rners placer mining made Kennecott second and third or ancient streambeds buried largest producer of gold in the nation under the alluvials washed down depending on whether is was shutfrom mountains ranges millions of has been closed down by strike years ago since earlier this year Cyanidation recovery of gold Newmont began operations at Carfrom milled or heaped ore has much lin 20 years ago on a $10 million inadvanced Consider the economics of vestment In a mere eight months, it heap leaching, wherin lower-grad- e turned a profit of near $892,000 ore is dumped in the open and satuAfter the collapse of the Bretton rated by cyanide spray Woods monetary agreement in the The solution containing the gold values goes into the mill wheie its early 1970s, gold prices began to climb And after OPEC embargoed gold is claimed by attachment to carand quadrupled the price of oil in Ocbon or recovered by electrolysis in a tober, 1973 gold prices increased zinc solution sharply The Carlin ore deposits are the re By 1974 it was $174 an ounce suit of superheated gold containing With inflation raging in the latter liquids that filtered through rocks dn'omites, lime Mont s even vuLamcs Set h 10, Column 1 computer- d M imhIy 1 ! 1 i |