* New, automated mining equipment cuts costs, boosts safety
* Companies eye driverless vehicles, new digging methods
* Automation essential as miners dig deeper, in remote areas
* Unions make peace with automation: ‘good for productivity’
By Julie Gordon
SUDBURY, Ontario, Oct 28 (Reuters) – In an office trailer
parked outside a mine shaft in northern Ontario, operator
Carolyn St-Jean leans back in her chair and monitors a machine
loading nickel-rich ore into rail cars deep underground.
Once filled, the automated train will snake through a series
of narrow tunnels, emerge from a rocky outcropping, then loop
past St-Jean’s window and dump its payload for sorting.
Vale SA, the Brazilian company that owns the mine
near this nickel-rich Canadian town, has spent nearly $50
million in two years to install and test the “rail-veyor.” The
company believes the transport system will revolutionize how it
builds and extracts new mineral deposits.
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