Occupational Health
At the Life of Mine | Mine Waste and Tailings Conference 2025 in Brisbane, University of Queensland PhD candidate Yue Xiong unveiled a promising alternative to radiation-based monitoring of tailings slurry pipelines - one that could make real-time density measurement safer, cheaper and more adaptable across mine sites.
When Barry McKay walked into Ashton Coal and saw machines cutting stone instead of coal, he knew something had to change.
In mining, some of the biggest risks don’t come from broken equipment or unstable ground - they come from the way our brains are wired.
In open-pit mining, getting the right information at the right time can mean the difference between precise grade control and costly dilution - and one technology is giving operators a sharper, faster view of what lies beneath each bench.
Even with control plans, take-fives, and risk assessments stacked high, mining engineers admit incidents still happen because the real world never plays out as neatly as the documents.
It’s a hard truth that mining professionals might not want to hear: much of what we call safety work - the forms, the checklists, the risk matrices, the “take fives”- doesn’t actually keep people safe.
Deep underground in the Illawarra, a battery electric transporter called Driftex is rewriting the rules of coal mining by beating diesel on safety, speed and cost.
The future of underground mining could mean no one sets foot underground at all - a zero-entry mine powered by autonomy, interoperability, and constantly updated digital twins.
At the NSW Resources Regulator’s 33rd Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar, Chief Inspector of Mines Anthony Margetts and Principal Inspector – Technical Russell Wood delivered a clear message: the industry must move beyond box-ticking and adopt smarter, outcomes-focused approaches to its most persistent hazards.
Every hour of downtime costs a mine tens of thousands of dollars, and Professor Amir Gandomi told the NSW Resources Regulator’s Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar how artificial intelligence is now cutting those losses by predicting failures and optimising operations in seconds.
