Abstract :
[en] In the past the European ground produced a considerable quantity of mineral resources among which one can cite energy resources (coal, oil, natural gas,...), metal resources (copper, gold, silver, zinc, lead,...), industrial minerals and crushed/ornamental rocks. Presently most of the classical mining operations and even drilling operations have been closed down, but the resources have not been necessarily exhausted, because the decisions where motivated mainly by lack of competitiveness with respect to the raw materials imported from other continents. For the last recent years, the presence of skilled people in Europe also guarantied good relations with mining countries and therefore a secure supply for European factories.
But during the last decades many European countries stopped mining education and the research centers have been dismantled or oriented to different connected fields of science. Today one can wonder about the sustainability of the raw material and energy supply for Europe, it is then of some importance to look to which clean technology can be developed in order to ensure, at least partly, the independence of the continent. On the mining point of view, we must raise the question about the possibility of recovering the available resources by classical open pit and/or underground mines, or even by alternative techniques. The energy of coal deposit can for instance be recovered by the coal bed methane, the underground coal gasification or combined techniques. Is it also possible to envisage the in situ leaching to recover some typical metal from deep deposits? All of these questions deserve to be discussed, and new approaches have to be developed by taking into account security and environmental concerns.
