28 1. INTRODUCTION The mining industry is facing increasing pressure to deliver the metals required for global decarbonisation while reducing its environmental footprint. Declining ore grades require larger volumes of material to be mined, transported and processed to produce the same metal output, increasing operating costs, energy demand, water consumption, waste generation and surface disturbance. At the same time, future deposits are expected to be deeper and technically more challenging to develop, increasing the need for mining paths that can extract more value from the resource while reducing material movement. In response to these challenges, In-Place Mining (IPM) has emerged as an alternative aimed at minimizing material movement, reducing waste generation and enhancing resource efficiency. By shifting the focus toward selective extraction and on-site or near-source processing, IPM offers a pathway to reduce waste generation and surface disturbance while improving project economics through the extraction and processing of lower volumes of highervalue material (Sellers et al., 2023). Mining3 has used the term IPM to consider not only in-situ leaching, but also other low-footprint methodologies, as described by Batterham and Robinson (2019), each tailored to specific geological and operational contexts. 1.1 In-Situ Recovery (ISR) In-Situ Recovery (ISR) is the IPM pathway that most directly reduces rock movement. It involves injecting lixiviants into a mineralised body to dissolve target metals, followed by recovery of the pregnant solution for downstream processing. A schematic of this method is shown in Figure 1. ISR has been applied for decades, particularly in uranium, and has also been investigated or applied for commodities such as copper and gold (Seredkin et al., 2016). Its potential benefits include reduced excavation, lower surface disturbance and reduced dependence on conventional haulage and comminution. However, ISR requires suitable permeability, favourable geometallurgy, hydraulic control and robust solution containment. These requirements limit its applicability, particularly in many hard-rock deposits where full ISR may be desirable but not technically feasible.
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