The Radomiro Tomic mine is an

open pit mine 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 mining ...

that extracts copper oxide minerals at above sea level in the

Andes mountains The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the List of mountain ranges#Mountain ranges by length, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range i ...

near to

Chuquicamata Chuquicamata ( ; referred to as Chuqui for short) is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at above sea level. It is northeast of Antofagasta and n ...

mine and Calama in northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

Antofagasta Region The Antofagasta Region ( es, Región de Antofagasta, ) is one of Chile's sixteen first-order administrative divisions. The second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta, El Loa and Tocopilla. It is bordered t ...

. Although this deposit was discovered in the 1950s, its operations started only in 1995, after Codelco updated the feasibility studies for its exploitation and acquired the technology necessary to exploit it profitably. Today, Chilean Copper Corporation (

Codelco Codelco (''Corporación Nacional'' ''del'' ''Cobre de Chile'' or, in English, the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is a Chilean state-owned copper mining company. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationali ...

) controls the mine. Until 1999, Radomiro Tomic was referred to as "Codelco Chile Division Radomiro Tomić", since then, (

) has renamed it "Codelco Norte".

External links

Codelco
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radomiro Tomic Copper mines in Chile Mines in Antofagasta Region Open-pit mines Surface mines in Chile