A few years back I was involved with a Gold Coast based company that could extract metal (at the time copper) from mine waste dumps. I was instrumental in this company putting in 1,200 cell trail plant at the Grasberg plant in Irian Jaya. Unfortunately the company was headed up at the time by a halfwit and he managed to completely cock up a terrific opportunity! It does work with Gold by the way.
My company also made some lab and other equipment for a French company looking at using bacteria for extracting Gold out of the mineral sands on Stradbroke Island.
So if you are correct we could just extract half of the Gold for now using the current technology and then look at treating the valuable tailings at a later date. The technology I speak of above was back in the 1990’s so I dare say things have moved on a little since then. Our local technology knocking arm-chair Luddites can talk all they wish; however, I for one shall be keeping the faith; after all I have seen these methods used with my own eyes.
“The EMEW® technology, developed by Electrometals Technologies Limited of Australia, offers (through its high efficiency and simplicity) this market a ‘new generation’ of electrowinning technology which is simple and affordable.”