The Mir mine (russian: кимберлитовая алмазная трубка «Мир» ''kimberlitovaya almaznaya trubka "Mir"''; English:
kimberlite
Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known to be the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an diamond called the Star of ...
diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
pipe "Peace"), also called the Mirny mine, is an
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 of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow.
This form of minin ...
diamond mine
There are a limited number of commercially available diamond mines currently operating in the world, with the 50 largest mines accounting for approximately 90% of global supply. Diamonds are also mined alluvially over disperse areas, where dia ...
located in
Mirny,
Sakha Republic
Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of roughly 1 million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eas ...
, in the
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
n region of eastern
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. The mine is more than 525 meters (1,722 ft) deep (4th in the world), has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft),
[English version]
/ref> and is one of the largest excavated holes in the world.
Open-pit mining began in 1957 and was discontinued in 2001. Since 2009, it has been active as an underground diamond mine.
Discovery
The diamond-bearing deposits were discovered on June 13, 1955, by Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
geologists Yuri Khabardin, Ekaterina Elagina and Viktor Avdeenko during the large Amakinsky Expedition in Yakut ASSR
The Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (russian: Якутская Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика, ''Yakutskaya Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika''; sah, С ...
. They found traces of the volcanic rock kimberlite
Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known to be the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an diamond called the Star of ...
, which is usually associated with diamonds. This finding was the second success in the search for kimberlite in Russia, after numerous failed expeditions of the 1940s and 1950s. (The first was Zarnitsa mine
The Zarnitsa mine (russian: Кимберлитовая алмазная трубка «Зарница» ''Kimberlitovaya Almaznaya Trubka "Зарница"''; English: kimberlite diamond pipe "Lightning" (more exact translation: "heat lightning")) ...
, 1954.) For this discovery, in 1957 Khabardin was given the Lenin Prize, one of the highest awards in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
Development
The development of the mine started in 1957, in extremely harsh climate conditions. Seven months of winter per year froze the ground, making it hard to mine. During the brief summer months, the ground turned to slush. Buildings had to be raised on piles, so that they would not sink from their warmth melting the permafrost. The main processing plant had to be built on better ground, found away from the mine. The winter temperatures were so low that car tires and steel would shatter and oil would freeze. During the winter, workers used jet engines to thaw and dig out the permafrost or blasted it with dynamite to get access to the underlying kimberlite. The entire mine had to be covered at night to prevent the machinery from freezing.
In the 1960s the mine was producing of diamond per year, of which a relatively high fraction (20%) were of gem quality. The upper layers of the mine (down to ) had very high diamond contents of per tonne of ore, with a relatively high ratio of gems to industrial stones. The yield decreased to about per tonne and the production rate slowed to per year near the pit bottom. The largest diamond of the mine was found on 23 December 1980; it weighed and was named " 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (russian: XXVI съезд КПСС). The mine operation was interrupted in the 1990s at a depth of after the pit bottom became flooded, but resumed later.
Operations
The Mir mine was the first developed and the largest diamond mine in the Soviet Union. Its surface operation lasted 44 years, finally closing in June 2001. After the collapse of the USSR, in the 1990s, the mine was operated by the Sakha diamond company, which reported annual profits in excess of $600 million from diamond sales.
Later, the mine was operated by Alrosa, the largest diamond producing company in Russia, and employed 3,600 workers. It had long been anticipated that the recovery of diamonds by conventional surface mining would end. Therefore, in the 1970s construction of a network of tunnels for underground diamond recovery began. By 1999, the project operated exclusively as an underground mine. In order to stabilize the abandoned surface main pit, its bottom was covered by a rubble layer thick. After underground operations began, the project had a mine life estimate of 27 years, based on a drilling exploration program to a depth of . Production ceased in 2001, and the Mir mine closed in 2004.
The mine was recommissioned in 2009, and is expected to remain operational for 50 more years. The underground Mir mine flooded again in 2017, trapping over 140 miners, all but 8 of whom were rescued.
See also
*Udachnaya pipe
The Udachnaya pipe (russian: тру́бка Уда́чная, literally ''lucky pipe'') is a diamond deposit in the Daldyn- Alakit kimberlite field in Sakha Republic, Russia. It is an open-pit mine, and is located just outside the Arctic ...
References
External links
{{Commons category, Mir mine
Mirny Diamond Mine at Atlas Obscura
United States Mine Rescue Association
BBC News Photo journal: "Postcards from Russia"
Aerial view of the Mirny Diamond Mine from Airliners.net
Biggest Diamond Mines
Diamond mines in Russia
Diamond mines in the Soviet Union
Diatremes of Russia
Economy of Siberia
Open-pit mines
Science and technology in the Soviet Union
Surface mines in Russia