Chapter 22: A Mountain of Mine Waste
"No trouble at all. You experts came all the way from Yanjing to help figure out solutions for our mine. If that means the mine can keep operating, what's a little effort from me?" said Xu Shaoxi, as he led Li Tang and the others past the noisy processing plant, heading in the direction of the ore body's dip. Along the way, he chatted casually.
"Back when the mine first opened, we came from all over the country. Many even brought their families. If the mine shuts down and wages stop, what do we do? No land, no jobs—how would we support our families?"
"There's always a way," Li Tang said, understanding the old man's worries.
They climbed to a higher elevation overlooking the vast mining pit, where large portions of the mountain had been removed. Looking down into the pit, which was more than a hundred meters deep, Li Tang felt a wave of dizziness.
"Twenty years ago, this was just barren hillside. The surface was rich in copper—some areas had over 5% grade. When we started, a thousand workers, each with a shovel, dug enthusiastically. Then later came the heavy machinery."
The old man's eyes were filled with emotion as he recalled the mine's transformation.
After a moment of nostalgia, he continued explaining, "Demen Copper Mine is a porphyry-type deposit. You all know how those work, right? Magma brings minerals up through channels. As it interacts with surface rock, hydrothermal reactions cause mineralization. The ore body is shaped like a funnel—wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. Once the high-grade surface ores are mined out, what remains deep underground is lower in grade and harder to extract."
He had started as a technician and worked his way up to Technical Director. His main role was determining the ore body's position and guiding extraction accurately.
When it came to understanding the spatial distribution of the ore, no one knew it better than him.
He knew the mine was nearing exhaustion. Still, he clung to a faint hope—maybe, just maybe, some brilliant expert could propose a method or find an overlooked deposit.
After all, if they lost their jobs, where else could they go?
Xu had given everything to this mine.
Li Tang was deeply moved. Looking at the devastated terrain, the gaping pit was like a wound carved into Mother Earth.
"Let's head over there and have a look," Xu said, pointing toward another area.
They followed the ore body's dip, crossing over a small hill, until a massive man-made hill came into view.
"Twenty years of mining. For every ton of ore, several tons of waste rock were dug up and dumped here."
Xu pointed at the towering pile of loose rock. "Even if the mine shuts down, these tailings will be a problem. Now the government requires mines to be reclaimed and re-greened after closure. Just handling this tailings dump will cost over a million."
"Let's take a closer look at these tailings," Li Tang suggested.
The road, flattened by trucks, was broad and smooth—easy to follow.
Clang!
Wei Shixing, bored, picked up a stone and hurled it into the distance. It struck a rock pile with a sharp crack, sending chips flying.
"Go fetch that rock," Li Tang said coldly.
Startled, Wei Shixing ran to retrieve the stone.
Xu thought Li Tang was angry and tried to ease the mood. "There aren't many people around here. Tossing a rock won't cause harm. It's fine."
"Hand it to me," Li Tang said.
He took the stone from Wei Shixing and examined it closely.
It was a gray-green rock with faint yellowish streaks along its fractured edge.
"This is moderately altered phyllite," he declared.
Wei and He Runqi looked at the rock, utterly confused.
Xu's eyes lit up. "Yes, phyllite indeed!"
"Runqi, get the portable analyzer."
They scanned the rock. The result: 8% copper content.
"That high?" Even Li Tang was surprised.
Xu remained calm. "In phyllite, localized copper enrichment can happen. But it's not widespread—just occasional high spots. During mining, it's hard to distinguish. Most of this ends up in the tailings."
"Let's scan the rest," Li Tang said, heading deeper into the mountainous pile.
They surveyed the site thoroughly with the analyzer. As Xu had said, the high-copper stone was an anomaly.
Most of the tailings had copper content around 0.1%—far below the 0.3% cutoff. Essentially worthless.
At the edge of the newly exposed waste, Li Tang spotted another tailings pile in the distance. This one was already overgrown with weeds.
"That's an older one. The vegetation's taken over."
Experts usually just glance at such places from afar. No one wants to wade into the brush.
Xu didn't mind. He often wandered around the mine anyway. The worst that happened was grass seeds stuck to his clothes.
"Can we go over there?" Li Tang asked.
"Of course."
The old man led the way. The three younger men followed, stepping into a hill that had been abandoned for over a decade and was now covered in weeds.
"When we started the mine, the surface copper was amazing—5% grade. It was like printing money. We were so focused on the good stuff that we discarded tons of what would still be valuable today. Back then, ore at 0.5% was ignored."
"This area's pretty good!" Runqi called out, scanning as he walked. "Readings are all above 0.3%—right at the cutoff!"
"Back then, our smelting tech was poor. We only mined high-grade ore. In the '80s, demand and prices were low. You needed 2% or even 3% to turn a profit. Lots of what's now valuable got dumped as waste."
"What a shame," He Runqi sighed.
"It's the cost of progress. Now everything's mechanized, smelting is better, and even 1% ore is considered high-grade."
"There's so much waste here—like a mountain. If we could squeeze all the copper out like milking a cow, we'd make a fortune."
"You make it sound easy," Xu chuckled. "Even 0.3% or 0.5% ore is tough to process. Smelting it requires coke, iron, and other expensive inputs. Costs are sky-high. No profit. Unless the tech gets even better."
"We're not tech researchers, so it's out of our hands."
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