In addition to everything you said, (which people really need to understand about ANY industry in the US that goes dark and is shipped off-shore - whether it be steel plants, mines, manufacturing, farmland that is converted to something else, etc), once you shut down a mine that had been in operation, you need to file a new NEPA permitting process, and if the mine had been in conforming operation from before the Clinton administration, the new NEPA and NPDES permitting requirements are MUCH tougher than the old rules under which the mine had been operating.
For a mine of fair size, I’d reckon that permitting and other issues require an up-front cost of at least $0.5B to get the first load out.
Spot on! ;^)
Which is one reason why many mines go on "stand by" with a skeleton crew to run pumps, take samples, etc. It is far less expensive to keep a half dozen people on the payroll for decades than to go through the reclamation process - especially if there is any potential for future operations.