The Diavik Diamond Mine is a

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...

mine in the

North Slave Region The North Slave Region or ''Tłicho Region'' is one of five List of regions of the Northwest Territories, administrative regions in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is the most populous of the five regions, with a population of almost 2 ...

of the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

, Canada, about northeast of

Yellowknife Yellowknife is the capital, largest community, and the only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of t ...

Description

Diavik Diamond Mine is an industrial complex set in a remote,

subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of hemiboreal regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Fennoscandia, Northwestern Russia, Siberia, and the Cair ...

landscape. It consists of four kimberlite pipes associated with the Lac de Gras kimberlite field and is located on an island in Lac de Gras informally known as East Island. It is about south of the

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the northernmost of the five major circle of latitude, circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth at about 66° 34' N. Its southern counterpart is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circl ...

. In the 2015 satellite image below, one can see the two main open pits, waste rock pile, and an airstrip capable of landing aircraft as large as

Boeing 737 The Boeing 737 is an American narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Boeing Renton Factory, Renton factory in Washington (state), Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the t ...

s and C130 Hercules. The complex also houses processing, power and boiler plants, fuel tanks, water and sewage processing facilities, maintenance shop, administrative buildings, and accommodations for workers. It is connected to points south by an

ice road An ice road or ice bridge is a human-made structure that runs on a frozen water surface (a river, a lake or a sea water expanse).Masterson, D. and Løset, S., 2011, ISO 19906: Bearing capacity of ice and ice roads, Proceedings of the 21st Int ...

and Diavik Airport with a gravel runway regularly accommodating

Commercial importance

The mine is owned by a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between the

Rio Tinto Group Rio Tinto Group is a British-Australian multinational company that is the world's second largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). It was founded in 1873 when a group of investors purchased a mine complex on the Río Tinto, in Hu ...

(60%) and Dominion Diamond Corporation (40%), and is operated by Yellowknife-based Diavik Diamond Mines Inc., a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Group. Commercial production commenced in 2003, and the lifespan of the mine is expected to be 16 to 22 years. It has become an important part of the regional economy, employing 1,000, and producing approximately 7 million carats () of diamonds annually.

History

The area was surveyed in 1992, and construction began in 2001, with production commencing in January 2003. In 2006, the ice road from

to the Diavik mine and neighbouring mines froze late and thawed early. The Diavik mine could not truck in all the supplies needed for the rest of 2006 before the road closed and arrangements had to be made to bring the remainder of the supplies in by air. Subsequent annual ice road resupply has been completed as planned. On July 5, 2007, a consortium of seven mining companies, including Rio Tinto, announced they are sponsoring environmental impact studies to construct a deep-water port in

Bathurst Inlet Bathurst Inlet, officially Kiluhiqtuq, is a deep inlet located along the northern coast of the Canadian mainland, at the east end of Coronation Gulf, into which the Burnside and Western rivers empty. The name, or its native equivalent ''Kingo ...

. Their plans include building a road connecting the port to their mines. The port would serve vessels of up to 25,000

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the s ...

s. In March 2010, underground mining began at the mine. The transition from

open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...

underground mining Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a la ...

was completed in September 2012. In September 2012, Diavik completed the construction of the Northwest Territories' first large-scale

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

. The four-turbine, 9.2-megawatt facility provides 11 per cent (2015) of the Diavik mine's annual power needs and operates at 98% availability. Diesel fuel offset is about per year. Diavik operates the world's largest wind-diesel hybrid power facility at its remote off-grid mine. The wind farm, operational down to , sets a new benchmark in cold-climate renewable energy. In 2015, $US350 million was announced to fund the exploitation of a fourth kimberlite pipe ore body, known as A21. Construction of the A21 rockfill dike (like the other three ore bodies, the A21

kimberlite Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known as the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an 83.5-Car ...

pipe is under the shallow waters of Lac de Gras) is expected to be complete in 2018, with the first diamonds expected in the fall of that year. To build the dike, Diavik will use the same technologies used to build the A154 and A418 dikes. In December 2015, Rio Tinto announced the discovery of the 187.7- carat Diavik Foxfire diamond, one of Canada's largest rough gem quality diamonds ever produced. The Diavik Foxfire was bestowed an indigenous name, Noi?eh Kwe, which means caribou crossing stone in the Tlicho First Nation language. In October 2018, a yellow diamond of 552 carats was found at the mine. This is the largest diamond ever found in North America. On January 23, 2024, a

Northwestern Air Northwestern Air is an airline based in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada. It operates scheduled passenger services to seven destinations in two territories/provinces, as well as undertaking ad hoc charters and long-term charter contra ...

charter flight carrying workers to the mine crashed shortly after takeoff from

Fort Smith Airport Fort Smith Airport is located near Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada. Runway 03/21 has no winter service. The Fort Smith (District) Heliport is located southeast of the airport. Airlines and destinat ...

, killing six people and injuring one.

References

External links

* {{Official, http://www.diavik.ca
1991 Discovery of Diamonds in the Northwest Territories

Photos of Diavik Mine
at Google Images 2003 establishments in the Northwest Territories Diamond mines in Canada Diatremes of the Northwest Territories Mines in the Northwest Territories Open-pit mines Pre-Holocene volcanoes Rio Tinto (corporation) subsidiaries Surface mines in Canada

Description

Commercial importance

History

See also

References

External links