Most underground mines involve ventilation systems.  You need to push cool surface air down into those hot, deep workings to keep them cool.  The right temperature in underground mine workings is not only a matter of pleasant surroundings.  I recall reading that the accident rate jumps as the temperature increases: at about seventy degrees things are optimally safe, at eighty degrees the accident rate soars.   Ventilation systems are needed because the rocks are hot from the heat generated by radioactive processes deep in the earth’s interior.   Now professors from the University of British Columbia (UBC) are looking at tapping into the heat from closed underground mines.  They reckon this is a cheap source of energy for those dwellings and businesses that remain behind after the mine is shut down.  Now that is sustainable development for you: first a mine and then a solarium, or should we call it a heatarium or mine-arium?

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