The extraction of mineral deposits is usually charged with additional taxes or royalty fees that go beyond the general income tax. As a rule, countries prefer stable sources of fiscal revenues based on the volume of raw material extraction, and investors prefer models based on profit tax, i.e. taking operating costs and risks lower than the expected profitability of the project into account. As a rule, too high a burden for the mining sector affects investors’ decisions regarding the introduction of new investments. There are a number of examples where excessive fiscal burdens force investors to move to countries with more favorable tax systems. An analysis of various forms of taxation of mining enterprises around the world has been presented and compared with the system implemented in Poland. Usually, the countries that apply the royalty fee in the mining sector at the same time introduce a number of adaptation mechanisms. This is crucial for new investments due to the fact that they may to some extent compensate for the high costs of transition from the investment to the operational phase. In most cases, several incentive mechanisms are used at the same time, e.g. the accelerated settlement of investment expenditures and the unlimited settlement of losses. The copper and silver mining tax introduced in Poland increased the discounted effective tax rate (ETR) from 38.5% to 89% for the entire investment period, which resulted in a 11-year return on investment, as well as a drop in the internal rate of return (IRR).There are currently no mechanisms in Poland which would balance the burden of this tax for a new investor. In order to balance the extraction tax for certain minerals in terms of the IRR and ETR key indicators, the introduction of several adaptation mechanisms has been proposed. For new investments the most essential mechanism is the preferential settlement of capital expenditures incurred in the pre-production phase of an investment. The others include accelerated amortization, the ability to deduct certain expenses for the exploration phase from the tax base, along with an extended tax loss settlement period, or a mechanism for deducting a certain percentage of investment expenses directly from the tax.

W wielu krajach europejskich od lat znaczny udział w produkcji energii mają elektrownie nuklearne. Jednym z głównych problemów powstających przy tego typu produkcji są duże ilości szkodliwych odpadów powstających podczas spalania paliwa jądrowego.

In 2011, the Miedzi Copper Corporation (MCC) initiated its exploration program involving deep Cu-Ag deposits in the Fore-Sudetic Monocline. A very vast study area was adopted, along with the use of a wide range of research instruments. In the years 2011–2013 the exploration of MCC involved 21 concession areas. The location of concessions for exploration as well as exploration and prospecting was based on the known prognostic and hypothetical areas with confirmed contact of the Rote Fäule facies with the reduced facies, placed in the proximity of the Zechstein elevations. In 2012 and 2013, historical boreholes drilled mainly by the petroleum industry were logged, and in cases where the preservation of rock material allowed, samples were collected for chemical analyses. Moreover, a wide range of specialized examinations was performed, involving organic chemistry, coal macerals, vitrinite reflectance and petrography, with a particular emphasis on the Rock Eval method. The latter allows the presence of the so-called strong Rote Fäule associated with the presence of the richest mineralized horizons to be established. It was equally important for the purpose of exploration to perform the reprocessing of geophysical data using the innovative method of effective reflection coefficients. This allows transforming a conventional seismic image into an impulse form of seismic records, meaning a temporal sequence of coefficients, whose sections can be correlated with the logs of historical boreholes in order to trace the course of lithological series. This method provides a much higher accuracy for determining structural elements crucial for exploration than before, suggesting the presence of various tectonic phenomena important for mineralization. As a result, a more detailed mineralization distribution model was obtained and the so-called sweet spots were pinpointed, becoming an object of further drilling exploration. The number of active concessions was reduced to 6, which resulted largely not just from the absence of ore, but also from economic premises. The drilling program initiated in 2013 and still continued today allowed the discovery and preliminary documentation of three copper and silver deposits in the Fore-Sudetic Monocline. These are the Mozów and Sulmierzyce deposits, where the presence of prospective areas was previously recorded, as well as the Nowa Sól deposit, discovered in the so-called green field, where no ore exploration was previously conducted. At the current stage of identification, each of these deposits contains resources exceeding 5 million tons of equivalent copper, and the performed economic analyses indicate the viability of their extraction using the modern methods of shaft sinking, air conditioning and waste management.

Nuclear power plants are playing an increasingly important role in energy production in many European countries. One of the key problems that arise as a result is what to do with the high volume of nuclear waste.

The protection of copper and silver ore resources in the Polish Lubuskie Province requires certain steps to be taken, the suggestions for which are presented in this article. It addresses both known and newly discovered ore deposits, as well as prospective areas and places of ongoing exploration, which throughout the paper are collectively recognized as potential Cu-Ag mining areas. The example of Lubuskie Province was chosen as an exceptional region with multiple known areas of copper and silver ore potential, but no active mining operations until now. The study focuses on the nature and location of all potential mining areas in Lubuskie Province, and subsequently suggests the means of their protection which can be implemented today, as well as in the future. Such means should be introduced by way of new or amended legal regulations. Certain major changes to Polish law are necessary to provide sufficient protection of both currently known, as well as possible future deposits, against such use of land which would prevent the extraction of their resources. The study shows that the legal regulations effective in Poland today are insufficient or too vague, as they do not include any provisions concerning prospective resources, as well as areas of active mineral exploration, instead focusing solely on officially registered mineral deposits. Therefore, the proposals of new solutions providing better protection of all potential Cu-Ag mining areas are presented in this article.

The Northern Copper Belt is located in south-western Poland, a region well known for its copper and silver occurrences of varying significance. This area also includes the abandoned mines of the North-Sudetic Trough (Old Copper District), as well as the currently active New Copper District in the southern part of the Fore- Sudetic Monocline. The vast exploration programme of Miedzi Copper Corp. initiated in 2011 in the northern, deeper part of the Fore Sudetic Monocline provided new data about the deeper parts of this geological unit, located north of the known deposits. A number of prospective areas with Cu-Ag mineralization were investigated, which ultimately resulted in the discovery of three new Cu-Ag deposits. Both the prospective areas and the documented deposits form the so-called Northern Copper Belt, which as a whole has high potential for the identification of new ore deposits and an increase in resources. A description of these three new deposits is provided along with characteristics of the areas of their possible extension, and the additional prospective areas with hypothetical and speculative resources. The new deposits are compared to other Polish Cu-Ag ore deposits, with an emphasis on differences in their geological structure and mineralogy. The paper also presents a brief summary of the applied new exploration tools which have led to this discovery.