L.P.RYZHOVA
Russia

Geoethical problems connected with a complex analysis of errors occurring in evaluating the exploitation of polymetalic ore deposits

      The exploitation of polymetalic ore deposits often does not confirm both quantity and quality of ore reserves given as result of previous geological exploration and used as basis of the appropriate technical document. The differences are caused by serious errors occurring in the exploration process when shapes, dimensions, bedding and grades of ore bodies have not n sufficiently defined. The real reserves are usually confirmed in a lower quality as well as lower quantity and the technology of the mining, dressing, metallurgical repartition and other processes is becoming more complex and the technical and economic indices are misrepresented and great losses and impoverishment occur.

     The trustworthiness of the exploration results including its evaluation is of a great importance for the profitableness of the mines and combinates but the real technical, methodological, geological and other errors in the computation of reserves have to change during the exploitation development general ideas concerning geological structure of the deposit decreasing also productivity, profitableness and effectiveness of mining enterprises.

     The results of comparing both exploration and exploitation data give evidence of sharp changes in the grades of principal components both in dip and strike. Therefore significant errors occur in the average grade of components and linear reserve of metals (evaluated for small parts of ore bodies). For decreasing errors and for increasing the accuracy of determining average grades it is necessary in the course of the final exploration to analyze the complete complex of sampling (trenching, samples in boreholes, geophysical measurements etc.) as well as the changes in grades of every component (using not on the linear but also curvilinear dependencies and taking into consideration coefficients of extractableness, enrichment, metallurgical repartition etc.). Probabilistic and statistical methods are to be used for determining prices of final products.

      Obviously the whole complex of described problems is to be considered also as a complex of ethical problems occurring in the course of the complete interpretation and evaluation of mining-geological and technical-economic information.