What are the economic problems with extracting copper?

Answer 1

It does take a lot of energy to extract copper ores from the ground.

Sometimes these efforts can be in vein as as little as 0.4% of copper can be found and 96.6% is just waste material.

Also, locating copper in the ground can be costly. Then there is the process of digging it up and transporting the ore to places where it can be purified, which is a process which will also cost a lot.

Finally transporting the copper from the extraction site to the purification site and then to it's final destination will be expensive.

However it is important to mention that copper is NOT the most expensive metal to obtain, due to it not being very radioactive.