The Udachnaya pipe (russian: тру́бка Уда́чная, literally ''lucky pipe'') is a

diamond Diamond is a 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 chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...

deposit in the Daldyn- Alakit

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 S ...

field in Sakha Republic,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. It 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 (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

, and is located just outside the Arctic circle at .

History

Udachnaya was discovered on 15 June 1955, just two days after the discovery of the diamond pipe

Mir ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...

by Soviet geologist Vladimir Shchukin and his team. It is about deep, making it the third deepest open-pit mine in the world (after

Bingham Canyon Mine The Bingham Canyon Mine, more commonly known as Kennecott Copper Mine among locals, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is the largest m ...

and

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 ...

). The nearby settlement of

Udachny Udachny ( rus, Удачный, p=ʊˈdatɕnɨj, lit. ''successful'' or ''lucky''; sah, Удачнай, ''Udaçnay'') is a town in Mirninsky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the Markha River, from Mirny, the administrative ce ...

is named for the deposit. , Udachnaya pipe is controlled by Russian diamond company Alrosa, which planned to halt open-pit mining in favor of underground mining in 2010. The mine has estimated reserves of of

diamonds Diamond is a 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 chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, bu ...

and an annual production capacity of .

References

External links

Satellite photo of the Udachnaya pipe
* {{cite web , last=Alexeev , first=Sergey V , author2=Alexander V. Drozdov , author3=Tatyana I. Drozdova , author4=Ludmila P. Alexeeva , title=The First Experience of Saline Drainage Waters Disposal from the Udachnaya Pipe Quarry into Permaforest , publisher=Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder , date=2006-03-16 , url=http://www.colorado.edu/INSTAAR/ArcticWS/get_abstr.html?id=10 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071114092759/https://www.colorado.edu/INSTAAR/ArcticWS/get_abstr.html?id=10 , archive-date=2007-11-14 , access-date=2006-12-31 Diamond mines in Russia Diamond mines in the Soviet Union Diatremes of Russia Open-pit mines Science and technology in the Soviet Union Sakha Republic Surface mines in Russia

History

See also

References

External links