The Role of Placer Deposits in Ensuring the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of Scarce Types of Strategic Mineral Raw Materials in Russia at the Present Stage

Abstract

Placer deposits had (and for a number of components still have) an important role in providing strategic types of mineral resource base for both Russia and the world as a whole. Placers have a number of advantages that make them in demand by the mining industry: relatively shallow (often accessible for open-pit mining) occurrence, disintegrated state of productive deposits, simplicity of enrichment processes (mainly gravitational systems), as well as the possibility of rapid involvement in exploitation, which significantly reduces payback period for investments. All this is even more relevant for modern Russia, when, in the shortest possible time, in conditions of a shortage of credit resources, it is necessary to implement a program of import substitution and provide the country with scarce types of strategic mineral raw materials, such as gold, platinum group metals, tin, rare metals, titanium, chromium, diamonds.