Pike River re-entry edges closer as experts draft safe re-entry plan

A re-entry into Pike River mine is near as a group of experts edge closer to making a safe entry plan.

A group of experts have spent that past few days trying to decide the safest way to re-enter the mine drift. They have one day left of deliberations. 

Two separate groups have been discussing plans to re-establish ventilation into the mine and come up with a full re-entry plan.

Pike River Recovery Chief Operations officer Dinghy Pattinson says any plan will go through a peer-review process before a final decision is made. 

"One group's figuring out how we re-establish ventilation and back to the 170m seal... the other group have been working on the full plan of how to then recover the drift up to the fall.

"Now those two plans join together and become one plan, because you can't do the main re-entry without re-establishing up to the 170m [seal] first."

A nitrogen-generating plant will feed nitrogen into the mine to flush out the methane, which is anticipated to allow safe ventilation and re-entry.

"It'll be a fresh air environment eventually," he says.

Pike River Family spokesperson Bernie Monk says the recent developments have been "refreshing".

"We're really going down the stage of re-entry," he said. "It's pretty refreshing going into these meetings and how easy it's been - it's been so easy.

"How has it taken all this time to get to the stage we're at? But here we are and were going to run with it."

Newshub.