Going underground: Noront Resources has subterreanean plan for Ring of Fire.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: GREEK REPORT

A leading junior nickel and chromite miner in the Ring of Fire wants to establish a light environmental footprint in the James Bay region.

Wes Hanson, Noront Resources' president and chief executive officer, laid out his company's impressive conceptual plans before a receptive audience of businesspeople and mining suppliers in Sudbury in late November.

While their McFauld's Lake rivals, Cliffs Natural Resources and KWG-Canada Chrome, are mapping out ambitious plans for an open pit chromite mine and railroad in the Far North, Noront Resources' development concept is positively subterreanean.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Toronto miner has preliminary plans for a massive underground complex beneath the swamps of the James Bay Lowlands.

With no operating mines to produce a steady flow of cash, Noront is focused on minimizing costs and is determined not to damage one of the world's largest wetlands.

Noront is eyeballing a mine, mill and tailings storage complex that is completely underground. There will be no headframe on surface.

"The goal is to build a mine you can walk over and not even know it's there," said Hanson.

Noront is the largest landholder in the Ring with 120,000 hectares under exploration, centred around its flagship Eagle's Nest deposit, 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay.

As a strictly fly-in, fly-out venture, the boggy terrain is challenging to explore and develop.

"It's not uncommon to see your diamond drilling contractor standing up to their waists in water, finishing a hole," said Hanson.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Noront wants to turn a winter road into an all-season road from Pickle Lake north to the remote community of Webequie. In their scenario, an 80-kilometre transmission line would supply power into the mine from a proposed Webequie generating station.

A slurry pipeline would transport concentrate from the mine site to a filter and drying plant in the community. Trucks, or possibly an extended pipeline, would carry the material 300 kilometres south to a Canadian National railhead.

Hanson said a pipeline is more efficient, less environmentally damaging and cheaper to operate than a railroad, which he estimates would cost $10 million per kilometre to build. He estimates their entire pipeline-power line-road project could be in the $300-million range.

But Hanson cautioned that it's only a preliminary assessment and upcoming engineering studies will prove up the economics.

"That pipeline could be 300 kilometres long, or...