RE: Cost of Building Hydro-Met Plant SoarsTommy is really trying to mislead. Tommy knows that this whole Nfld deal was more of a p*ssing match between management and Danny Williams(premier of Nfld). You see, Inco did not want to build this system and dragged it out for many years hoping Williams would back off. Unfortunately for them Williams is like a dog after a bone. You saw that in the last federal election when he started the ABC(Anybody But Conservatives) rally cry. The Conservatives took a licking in areas of the east where they usually do fairly well in. Williams did this with the offshore oil and just a couple months ago the oil companies finally gave in. The oil agreement was dragged out for years and he didn't give an inch. Inco did not want to have to build anymore than what they already have, they had the capacity at other locations to do the job and did not want to spend anymore money and hence they dragged it out as long as they could.
As far as the hundreds of millions of dollars INCO put towards this hydromet process, Tommy is misleading again, he knows d*mn well that the hundreds of millions came in froms of grants. Now step back a minute and ask yourself this, if the federal gov't was willing to give this money to a huge operation like Inco and the people of Nfld, imagine what they would be offering up to SRU and the far northern communities where people live in poverty their whole lives. The gov't will pony up the cash needed and will most likely pay for a great chunk of any start up costs incurred by SRU. They want to open up the north, show the world that this is a part of Canada and all the vast riches that are unexplored and undeveloped do in fact belong to Canada! The gov'ts want the high paying jobs so that the northern communities do not depend so much on government help in order to exist. Just imagine what this project and a couple others that are coming to fruition(like the AREVA Resources Canada's Kiggavik uranium deposit and others like diamond mines etc.) The north will become a developed area and the people of the north will benefit in not only jobs, but better health care, better homes and living conditions, better food and material costs etc, etc. Now is Tommy saying that he would not want this for the great people of Nunavut? If so, it proves what type of person he really is!
Now, there has been so much talk about the acid recovery and the saleable acid as a byproduct of this whole metallurgical operation. I would think that these other companies who are looking for Uranium would need the acid that SRU will have for sale, you want to talk about a match made in heaven?? SRU would have a very close partner to work with and if it is AREVA who puts the first Uranium mine into production they would quickly sign a deal with SRU for as much acid as they need. They may even agree to pay for some of SRU's start up costs in order to have a cheaper source for acid. I would think that the gov't of Nunavut would see this as a win-win situation, not only do they have a safe place for this acid to go but also the thousand or so full time, high paying jobs that would go with the two projects. We also know that there is a lot of diamond activity in the area, you find one or two kimberlites in the area it would make opening more mines that much cheaper as a lot of the infrastructure would be shared among them and government such as a deep water port, roads etc. etc.
So Tommy what was it that you were saying? Vicky, you got anything to say, how about Rob/digits/brex10?