RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:CYANIDE now banned in Costa Rica, is Newlox next?While it's been an amusing read, I'm not sure why anyone would give any oxygen to Newloxlurker after they stated:
"There is only one cyanide. Cyanide is a chemical compound (NaCN)."
That's like saying the chemical formula for Sodium is NaCl. Which, just in case you're not aware Newloxlurker, it isn't. Understanding the nomenclature for ionic compounds is, like, super-basic chemistry; as in just after learning to read the Periodic Table of Elements. That you would be so blissfully unaware of your own lack of chemistry knowledge while scoffing at others from your now shattered glass house was especially rich, as in truely delicious, and it really made my day, thank you. The compound you erroneously labeled as (the one and only) cyanide, NaCN, is actually Sodium Cyanide, which to your credit at least is in fact toxic (so half points for being in the right ball park). Just like the resource in JayBanks' post stated (a search that took them probably all of 30 seconds), a cyanide is a group of compounds which contain a Carbon triple bonded to a Nitrogen leaving one negative charge to be attached to something else (again with that maddeningly difficult ionic chemistry...). Life isn't a Bond film and there isn't just one 'cyanide' any more than there isn't just one 'acid'. It's, as they say, basic chemistry.
You also seem to be confused on how laws work. Funny thing about laws: very rarely, as in nearly never, are laws overly general and broad. Costa Rica did ban cyanide in 2010 in the form of a moratorium... on open-pit cyanide-leach mining. This is a tailings remediation company, which is not the same as an open pit mine. Different industries, different rules, different regulations.
'BuT cYaNiDe!?!?!?' I can nearly hear you screech at your monitor, so let's talk about why this is an ESG company: it has to do with the removal of the mercury from the contaminated tailings. Both cyanide and mercury are bad, m'Kay, but mercury is especially nasty since it has a tendency to accumulate in the host over time, right up that tasty food chain, until it's served up on your plate during family dinner giving you and your community a myriad of long-lasting negative health effects up to and including death. Yum! High concentrations of cyanide can certainly do loads of damage to the immidiate environment, particularly mercury cyanide, which by the way is formed when mercury isn't extracted from the tailings and the process of cyanidation is used for gold extraction of the concentrate. There is however a fair amount of research out there now describing how cyanide tailings can be effectively neutralized through biodegradation and biomineralization. Bare in mind too that these plants are small scale making effluent treatment easier to handle through this or any other process to remove or otherwise lock away cyanide before the effluent is released into the wider environment. But you know what doesn't biodegrade? Mercury. That just bioaccumulates.
Refer to the below link for some light reading and a good place to start:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036835/
The whole point here is to clean up the vast quantities of ALREADY EXISTENT tailings contaminated with mercury. Further, they are actively working on alternatives to conventional cyanide use in Carbon-In-Leach (CIL) processes, which they were never hiding by the way. Maybe dig a little deeper next time? It seems odd that you'd be lurking all this time but never thought to find out just how they were processing the tailings to produce gold. These alternatives include the use of those supposedly fantasy cyanogenic glycosides (a type of organic cyanide found in cassava), or Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) as a recyclable reagent, or the study of Organic Aqua Regia (OAR) as a novel, effective, non-toxic and water-free substitution to cyanidation. By the way, since we're both intimately versed in chemistry I'm sure you're aware that by 'organic' I mean the chemistry of carbon-containing compounds and not related in any way shape or form to one of the various delicious 'organic' offerings found at Whole Foods. OAR in particular looks very promising, with solid stage 1 results out at the beginning of the year. That sort of technology isn't going to change the field overnight and still has quite a ways to go before it is commercialized, but IT IS the sort of research I want my ESG picks to be actively pursuing particularly if it's being paid for by remediating mercury contaminated trailings. Nevermind the community outreach or commitments to pay fair prices to artisanal miners that the company has pledged.
So let's peruse over your list of grievances one more time here just in case we missed something... ah yes permitting. Both plants are fully permitted and now operational as stated in the official company newswires and investor slide deck. So yes, they are permitted and in compliance with local regulations (including those now decade-old regulations on the use of cyanide in the process - because both plants are very obviously CIL setups); see my earlier remarks about how laws are often specific and detailed for further clarification. I like the use of "hydromet" there in your fourth point. I'm assuming here the issue is the supposed play-up of "non-toxic and eco-friendly" by the company and not with "hydromet solution" since leaching with a cyanide solution is a form of hydrometallurgy. And on that front again, it looks like you just need to learn to dig a little deeper since they've been pretty open and forthright about their use of cyanidation for gold extraction beyond the small scale trial runs of DMSO and cyanide extracted from cyanogenic glycosides. Please, for the good of all us investors, go try to track down that offending news release where they said plants 1 or 2 were using anything but cyanidation.
Hmm, I think that about covers it. Oh wait! G-R-E-E-N-P-E-A-C-E. BAM! Nailed that too. Let me know if you need any help preparing for your next chemistry exam.