Geoenvironmental characteristics of Canadian critical metal deposits
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the global demand for many elements used in green energy and high-tech applications, including antimony (Sb), cobalt (Co), indium (In), lithium (Li), niobium (Nb) and the rare earth elements (REE). Canada has abundant resources of these critical elements, however, we know very little about the potential environmental impacts of mining these resources. The primary objective of this study is to characterize processes controlling the mobility of trace elements and radionuclides in mine wastes and waters at the abandoned St. Lawrence Columbium (SLC) Mine in Oka, Quebec. This mine operated from 1961 to 1976 and at the time was one of the largest Nb producers in the world. In FY 17-18, GSC scientists continued sampling mine wastes, groundwater and surface waters at the SLC Mine and initiated collaborative projects with the University of Ottawa (slag leaching) and Queen's University (waste rock weathering). Results to-date show that most REEs, uranium (U) and thorium (Th) occur in relatively insoluble minerals, but that the slag is reactive and a potential radiological hazard. Radionuclide levels in mine waters are very low, but elevated levels of fluoride are present in seepage from the tailings. GSC data on slag, groundwater, and pit lake chemistry were shared with the Quebec Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to help inform ongoing environmental management decisions for the SLC Mine. Results were also shared in a plain language fact sheet, and in both national and international conference presentations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".