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26 results for “Tailings”
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
…als meet air and water, and can run for centuries without intervention. · Upstream-raised tailings dams — built on their own deposited waste — carry the worst failure record and are now banned or being phased out in several jurisdictions. · Closure liabilities are supposed to be…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Mining · 19 August 2026
Nine Grams a Tonne
…is required to close the pit or underground workings, remove or stabilise waste rock and tailings, treat any residual water contamination, and rehabilitate the surface, funded by a closure bond posted before mining even begins. In practice, closure costs are frequently underesti…
Amara Okonjo · 18 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
…oles that carry their own distinct mercury exposure. · Land degradation and mercury-laden tailings often outlast the mining itself, affecting agriculture and fisheries for years after a site is abandoned. · What is artisanal and small-scale gold mining? ASGM refers to mining carr…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
…That number is the entire business. Everything else at a mine — the fleet, the mill, the tailings facility, the workforce, the community agreement, the closure bond — is machinery for turning grade into cash flow at an acceptable cost per tonne. To understand why gold mining beh…
Amara Okonjo · 20 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
…ining does offer is a much lower environmental cost per gram, no new land disturbance, no tailings facility and no perpetual water treatment. That is the honest case for it. It will not replace mining, and framing it that way sets it up to be judged against a target it cannot hit…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
…des no conventional gold mine could match, and do so with none of the overburden removal, tailings management or multi-decade closure liability of a primary mine. · The constraint on scaling this further is not technology but collection. The gold in a smartphone is only recoverab…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded. · A h…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
A doré bar arrives at 85 per cent purity and leaves at 99.99. Between those two numbers sit chlorine gas, aqua regia, an electrolytic cell and a chain of custody that is now as valuable as the metal i…
Tomas Herrera · 19 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
Most of the world's gold exposure is a contract, not a metal. Futures, unallocated accounts and exchange-traded funds each promise gold in a different way — and the differences only become visible whe…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
Governments report holding roughly 36,000 tonnes of gold — a figure quoted everywhere and verified almost nowhere. Between the published number and the physical bar sits a chain of certificates, custo…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 19 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
For two decades the gold price could be read off an inflation-linked bond screen. Then, somewhere after 2022, the relationship stopped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequ…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read
Industry · 20 August 2026
The Refiner's Ledger
Somewhere between a mine's doré bar and a Good Delivery brick sits a chain of chlorination furnaces, electrolytic cells, assay labs and accreditation committees that decides which gold the world's mar…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
Beneath the Bank of England and beneath lower Manhattan sit two of the largest concentrations of monetary gold on earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch th…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
