The Standardized Reclamation Cost Estimator (SRCE) is a public domain Microsoft Excel-based tool that has been used in Nevada for more than 10 years to calculate mine closure costs for financial assurance. The SRCE uses straightforward user inputs to create a first-principles estimate of closure costs. In addition to the Nevada-specific version, another version of SRCE is available for use in other states and internationally. Over the last two years the non-Nevada version has been significantly upgraded with numerous new features and improved performance to create SRCE 2.0. The new features greatly expand the capabilities and functionality of the model - so much that we have completely revamped our standard SRCE training short course. Because so many of the new features focus on things like detailed cost scheduling, filtering, and tracking costs by category, we have completely updated our curriculum to focus on strategizing the model setup based on site or company specific needs, and the type and intent of the cost estimate. There will still be a heavy emphasis on hands-on training, but after an initial few simple exercises, we will focus on closure cost types, how to set up a closure chart of accounts, developing useful filters, and effective scheduling for project-specific needs. Because the scope of the training has expanded beyond the introductory nature of previous short courses, this will be a three-day short course. Attendees will need to bring a laptop computer and engineering scale ruler for the hands-on exercises. If users wish to bring an existing SRCE model from a previous version, we will show them the process of importing that model into SRCE Version 2.0.
