Wednesday Jul 24 Sun/cloud & pleasant Trail, BC
Today was my day to visit the Teck facility. Jen couldn't join me; the smelter part of the tour is not handicap accessible.
Just before 10 a.m., I arrived at the downtown Trail Interpretive Centre. I looked at the displays in the centre before the actual tour started.
Ben, our tour guide, gave a brief introduction and then showed us two short films: the first on some of the history of the smelter in Trail and second, a short film on the Red Dog zinc mine in Alaska.
Both films were very enlightening. I knew some of the history of the smelter in Trail, but I was not aware of the Red Dog zinc mine. Interestingly, the 18-minute film showed very little of the actual mine (a la the tar sands in AB), more how the zinc ore was mined and also the facilities for the people working at Red Dog. It is a fascinating story.
Because the mine is inland from the port, a 52-mile (84 km) long haul road connects the mine to the mine's port site on the Chukchi Sea. The region is accessible only by air, served by the Red Dog Airport, except during the 100-day shipping season. Mine workers from remote villages in the region are ferried to the mine on small aircraft.
The zinc ore is crushed onsite then trucked to the port where it is loaded onto ships headed for Vancouver. From there it is rail-shipped through Washington state to Waneta, just south of Trail. It is offloaded at the Trimac facility there and then trucked to the smelter.
Teck does not allow pictures to be taken at the smelter.
As you can see in the two pictures below, not much of the raw materials used in the Teck facility is wasted. In fact, as the technology improved, more of the waste products were found to be marketable.
Slag, the byproduct of the smelting process, used to be dumped into the Columbia River. Then some smart Teckie found that it could be used in the production of cement. Today, slag is sold to cement companies. This is just one example of how everything is used and not much is discarded.
The Teck facility is really very impressive. If you ever visit Trail, go on the tour. You will not be disappointed.
That's it for today. The heat of yesterday has gone; the temperature today is very comfortable.
See you next time.
