What I wonder is why not use robotics underground.

Reader comment on: Siding With Salamanders

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Aug 22, 2010 00:00

Given that the continuous miners today are remote controlled, albeit 30 feet away, it's not that hard to add some cable and run them from a secure location a couple of miles back. It seems that the costs of the accidents are not high enough to make this a reality, but its clear we have the tech. Likewise we can likely do most other mining tasks by robot, keeping humans from risk. It's sort of like the offshore drilling environment where the changing of pipe and pipe handling is now done from a command chair, no one uses the tongs or throws the chain there. However I have not seen much work in the US on this but have seen some references in Australia.

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