Specialists Alarming about Amoulsar Gold Mine Development Hazards

Specialists Alarming about Amoulsar Gold Mine Development Hazards

 EcoLur

Amoulsar mine has 24 other elements, besides gold such as uranium, thorium, potassium, selenium…Only gold will be extracted, while 23-24 elements will be dumped into environment, which will become toxic for it. Hrachya Avagyan, Chief Specialist at the Institute of Economics of NAS RA, Dr in Geological Sciences, made this statement at the press conference held at “EcoLur” press club.

He mentioned that Amoulsar ore will be processed with heap leaching method with the use of cyanide. Under H. Avagyan, though cyanides are easily dissoluble, dissolving gold takes time, but this time is sufficient to make the territory toxic and for the animals pasturing in this territory to die.

The other speaker at the press conference was Greta Gabrielyan, Chairman of “Environmental Academy” NGO, who qualified the application of cyanide method as vandalism.

“This is the territory from where the collected waters should get to Sevan through Arpa-Sevan aqueduct, but the cyanide production has many features (by the way, leading countries have refused from it). The acidity of the environment should be kept in the ranges of 10.5-11 PH. Nevertheless, even in lab conditions it’s rather hard not to have a PH fluctuation in a glass of water. If there are fluctuations, there will be emissions, which are very hazardous, as sodium cyanide will turn into hydrogen cyanide if dissolved in water, which is a liquid with 27 C boiling point,” Greta Gabrielyan said. She mentioned there are a set of factors connected with situation, climatic conditions, natural disasters and humans, which can instigate breakdowns, which, in their turn, will generate toxic emissions and pollute the entire environment.

April 23, 2013 at 15:13