Page 234 - Beyond Decommissioning

Experience and lessons learned 215

quote HVAC challenges, accessibility, and emergency egress issues, but on the pos-
itive side there are natural weather-proofing, thermal mass, stability, and security
(Dezeen, 2016a).
As well known, Tate Modern is a modern and contemporary art gallery located in
London on the River Thames. The building is an adaptive reuse of the former Bank
side Power Station. More detail is given in IAEA (2011). For the purposes of this sec-
tion, some more information is given on the Tanks at Tate Modern. The Tanks were
previously used to store oil when the gallery was a power station. These giant circular
spaces in the foundations of the Building have kept their rough, industrial feel. The
Tanks produce new possibilities for artists and audiences. These three raw, industrial,
subterranean spaces, each measuring over 30 m across and 7 m high are the world’s
first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance,
installation, and film (Tate, n.d.).
Not every mine is readily repurposed. Many are polluted with toxic tailings and/or
acid mine drainage. They also can present a risk of explosion—for example, from
remaining methane pockets—or structural collapse. The 2015 spill of toxic sludge
from the Gold King Mine near Silverton, CO, exemplifies these challenges. In that
case, a contractor working for the EPA inadvertently discharged during cleanup oper-
3
ations some 12,000 m of polluting sludge from the old mine, which had ceased oper-
ations in 1922. The spill polluted rivers in three US States (NBC News, 2015a).
Although abandoned mines can notoriously be identified with their environmental
problems, innovative businesses are creating ways to inject new life into old excava-
tions. Innovative uses include electronic data storage, green energy, tourist, or recre-
ational attractions. A number of cases are given below; more detail can be found in
NBC News (2015b).
A biotechnology company that produces engineered plants for medical purpose
needed a nursery where the environment could be closely checked and sealed off from
predation or contamination by other plants, fungus, or bugs. He found all these con-
ditions that in an abandoned copper mine in White Pine, MI. The company occupies a
“decline mine,” meaning that the entryway is a sloped ramp rather than a vertical shaft
to the nursery area over a 100 m underground. The underground beds offer many ben-
efits. The plants thrive in a controlled environment—with a year-round ambient tem-
perature of 11°C, which reportedly allows to save about 10% in electrical costs over
above-ground facilities. The network of underground tunnels and rooms also has
much more space than the company could ever need.
A former gold mine in Lead, SD, houses the Sanford Underground Research Facil
ity, a vast underground physics lab where scientists study among others dark matter
and subatomic particles.
To convert the mine into laboratory space, water was drained before lining the mine
tunnels with concrete walls and epoxy floors. The 1460-m-deep mine is at a constant
temperature of about 24°C. US DOE covers the roughly $15 million a year to run the
facility, which includes operational costs as well as the expenses of pumping out the
accumulated water. Building the laboratory that deep underground is the only way to
shield experiments from the interference of the sun’s cosmic rays (99%
Invisible, 2016).