The Government of Asturias is working to launch cutting-edge technological development centers in different mining wells now in disuse.
The objective is to take advantage of one of the great heritages of the region: the five thousand kilometers of galleries and spaces of the mining deposits as places for the development of the new technological revolution at depths that can reach six hundred meters.
After a century and a half of mining activity that employed up to fifty thousand people in Asturias, the Principality is working on four large projects in the two main basins: Caudal and Nalón, through the Sekuens Science, Business Competitiveness and Innovation Agency, who will be in charge of managing the initiatives.
Hunosa, the company that owns the infrastructure and land, limits itself to making spaces and facilities available to the Principality;
The University of Oviedo will be in charge of the research part of several of the proposals, and the Regional Agri-Food Research and Development Service (Serida) will be in charge of developing one of the initiatives linked to underground agriculture.
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The Minister of Science, Business, Training and Employment, Borja Sánchez, has been working for three years on the unique projects that now want to see the light of day in two of the mining basins.
“What we want is for those infrastructures that were once so important for the economic development of Asturias as a region, today to be able to have other uses more linked to new productive activities.
“We want them to be platforms for technological development, we want to put mines at the epicenter of the transformation of productive activity in Asturias.”
The old mining shafts are now the epicenter of a change in the production system.
From producing energy, extracting minerals and transforming metals, what is now intended is to gradually produce technology.
“There is a lot of land, a lot of industrial land and above all there is a large reserve of water, which can be used for energy sustainability purposes and which can make certain technological developments easier.
Mining deposits are a strategic reserve of water that can have numerous uses, from cooling large data facilities, for example, to applications for agriculture or the development of other water-intensive industries,” says the Asturian counselor.
The projects
Santiago Well (Aller).
In this case, the Principality proposes a unique action: an underground laboratory in the old galleries.
The objective is to open a line of disruptive research related to the space industry and focused on the habitability of the Moon.
It will be a technology development and testing platform to inhabit the Moon.
The approach is the creation of high-performance equipment where work can be done under special conditions on new materials, 3D printing, manufacturing techniques, energy production, pharmacology...
The Science Minister gives the Artemis mission as an example: "We know that the international community is planning to establish a stable settlement on the Moon and we believe that we can provide an infrastructure where the necessary technology for that settlement is developed."
The starting point is to assimilate the mine galleries to the volcanic lava tubes of the Moon, which are where the scientific community is considering making these settlements.
This same year, a feasibility study of the project will be carried out, which will determine the necessary space, the most suitable underground galleries and also the technologies that can be tested.
The vocation of the project is international, “one of the key issues of the Santiago well project is to position it with the large space agencies,” says Borja Sánchez.
In this project, the University of Oviedo plays an important role, which for years has had the Institute of Space Sciences and Technologies of Asturias, a European reference in both astrophysics and astronomical research as well as that related to industrial developments and transfer in the aerospace industry.
In fact, it regularly collaborates with NASA and the European Space Agency.
This collaboration will be reinforced starting in October with the incorporation through the ATRAE program of Noemi Pinilla, a top international researcher who participates in some of the observation programs with the largest space telescope in history, the James Webb.
San Jorge Well (Aller).
The Government project provides for the installation of a data processing and storage center in the well's engine room, which will be the basis of the “Asturian cloud”.
The objective is to have a unique facility that offers technological solutions, guarantees cybersecurity and makes it possible to work with artificial intelligence, big data or the Internet of Things (IoT) to the administrations of the Principality of Asturias.
For this project, the Sekuens Science Agency has a budget of three million linked to the Just Transition Fund (FTJ) and the company Management of Public Telecommunications Infrastructures of the Principality of Asturias (Gitpa) will participate in the development.
Exterior of the San Jorge well, where it is planned to install a data processing and storage center. Government of Asturias
Barredo well and Mariana mine entrance (Mieres).
This mine, which includes the Mieres university campus, already has an active geothermal project developed by Hunosa and the University of Oviedo.
The objective now is to move towards the research and production of green hydrogen from the millions of cubic meters of water at its bottom.
Carrio Well (Laviana).
One of the unique actions is framed in the agriculture of the future, with the implementation of underground greenhouses taking advantage of one of the galleries for vegetable crops in darkness, without sunlight and with LED lamps as the only lighting.
The director of the Regional Agri-Food Research and Development Service, Mamen Oliván, is confident that the project can be launched this year.
As a starting point, a pilot plan for underground hydroponic crops is proposed to experiment with varieties.
“It will allow us to test what type of LED lights should be used for different crops, so that in a later phase we will have the possibility of scaling production and focusing on products that may be of interest to agriculture,” says Oliván.
This project is part of a complementary plan, Agroalnext, which has European funding and with the participation of different autonomous communities.
An example of this type of cultivation is the Growing Underground project in London, greenhouses installed in the tunnels of the Second World War bunkers.
The difference is that in the mining galleries there is abundant water that does not compete with drinking water and with stable environmental conditions of temperature and humidity.
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