Peacefully obtain. Kimberlite pipes and mines of the Russian Federation - tornado and tornado-like type, craters, batholiths, uranium calderas, prevention of disturbances in deposits and hazardous industries

Near the city of Mirny, in the Yakut region of permafrost, on the left bank of the middle reaches of the Irel River, there is the largest diamond quarry in the world, which is called the Mir kimberlite pipe.

Today, the diamond mining quarry in Yakutia has the following impressive parameters:

1. Its depth is 525 meters.
2. The volume of ore extracted from the quarry is 165 million cubic meters.
3. The bottom diameter is 160-310 meters.
4. The diameter along the outer ring is 1.2 kilometers.
5. The depth that has been explored is up to 1200 meters.

At first glance, one of the largest diamond quarries in the world is impressive in its scope and amazes the imagination. The formation of a kimberlite pipe is a consequence of a volcanic eruption, when gases under enormous temperature and high pressure through the earth’s crust burst out from the bowels of the earth. A volcanic explosion brings to the surface of the Earth a rock containing diamonds - kimberlite.

The tube is shaped like a glass and looks like a funnel of enormous proportions. The breed bears the same name as the city of Kimberley, located in South Africa, where a diamond weighing 85 carats was found in 1871. The found 16.7 gram “pebble” gave rise to the Diamond Fever.

History of the Mir kimberlite pipe

Even at the beginning of the 19th century, rumors began to arise about the presence of precious stones in the territory of Yakutia and the western lands bordering it. Teacher Pyotr Starovatov after civil war I got into a conversation with an old man in Kempendai, who told him about his discovery a couple of years ago in one of the local rivers - it was a sparkling pebble the size of a pinhead. He sold the find to a merchant for two bottles of vodka, a bag of cereal and five bags of tea. After a while, another person said that on the banks of the Kempendyayka and Chona rivers he also found gems. But it was only in 1947-1948 that targeted searches for diamonds began for the first time on the territory of the Siberian Platform. In the fall of 1948, a group of geologists led by G. Fanstein launched prospecting work on the Vilyui and Chona rivers, and on August 7, 1949, the group found the first diamond on the Sokolina sand spit, and subsequently a diamond placer was discovered here. Exploration work in 1950-1953 was also successful - several diamond placers were discovered, and on August 21, 1954, the first kimberlite pipe in the Soviet Union, called Zarnitsa, was discovered.

Soon, on June 13, 1955, the geological party saw a tall larch with exposed roots, where the fox had dug a deep hole. The bluish color of the earth suggested that it was kimberlite. This is how a team of geologists discovered a diamond pipe that turned out to be the largest in the world and with the richest content. The following telegram was sent to the authorities: “We lit the peace pipe, the tobacco is excellent.” Through this classified radiogram, Soviet geologists reported to the capital about the discovery of the Mir kimberlite diamond pipe. The phrase excellent tobacco meant that it contained a large amount of diamonds.

This find was extremely important for the USSR, since after the start of industrialization, the country experienced an acute shortage of industrial diamonds. It was believed that the use of diamond tools doubled the economic potential of the country, and soon the village of Mirny arose, where convoys moved along off-road roads, covering 2800 km of road. By the early 1960s, the USSR was already busy mining diamonds worth $1 billion a year, and the village of Mirny became the center of the Soviet diamond mining industry, today home to 40,000 people.

The richest diamond mine in the world

The deposit was developed in extremely difficult conditions climatic conditions, and in order to break deep into the permafrost, the ground had to be blasted with dynamite. Already in 1960, the annual diamond production was 2 kilograms, and 1/5 of them were of jewelry quality.

Diamonds, after appropriate cutting, turned into amazingly beautiful diamonds that were used to create jewelry. Soviet citizens planning to get married could afford to buy exquisite diamond engagement rings, in which diamonds were mined from the Yakut Mir kimberlite pipe. The remaining 80% of mined diamonds are used for industrial purposes, since according to the Mohs scale of reference minerals of hardness it is the hardest mineral in the world, with the highest thermal conductivity, dispersion and refraction.

The South African company De Beers was most concerned about the active development of the Mir kimberlite pipe, which was forced to buy Soviet-made diamonds in order to control prices on the world market. The top officials of the company, after negotiations with the Soviet leadership, agreed on the arrival of the delegation for their part in the village of Mirny. A positive answer was given, but with one condition - the delegation from the USSR, in turn, would visit diamond quarries in South Africa.

A delegation of the South African company arrived in Moscow in 1776 with the aim of further flight to the village of Mirny, but it was deliberately delayed, arranging endless meetings and banquets. When the delegation finally arrived in Yakutia to inspect the Mir kimberlite pipe, they only had 20 minutes left to inspect it. Despite this, De Beers specialists were greatly impressed by the scope of what they saw, and were surprised that Soviet specialists did not use water when processing the ore. Considering that the temperature in this region has been below freezing for 7 months, it is simply impossible to do this.

Today, the city of Mirny has turned from a small tent settlement into a modern industrial city, where there are asphalt roads, developed infrastructure and high-rise nine-story buildings. There is an airport, two diamond processing factories, a city park, bars, restaurants, an art gallery, swimming pools, a stadium, 3 libraries, an art school, a modern Palace of Culture and a 4-story hotel. For a provincial town there is quite a high intellectual potential here. The Yakutniproalmaz Research Institute has been operating here for many years and the Polytechnic Institute is open to applicants.

During the 44 years of operation of the Mir quarry (from 1957 to 2001), diamonds worth $17 billion were mined here. The scale of the quarry increased to such latitudes that trucks had to travel almost 8 km along a spiral road in order to rise to the surface from the bottom of the quarry.

Today diamond quarry owned by the Russian company ALROSA, which in 2001 stopped mining ore in the Mir open-pit mine using open-pit technology. The main reason is low efficiency and danger.

Research by scientists has shown that diamonds lie at a depth of more than 1000 meters, and in order to establish effective mining, not a quarry is needed, but an underground mine. The planned capacity of such a mine will be about a million tons of ore annually. The total period planned for development of the field is 34 years.

Interesting facts about the kimberlite pipe

1. Helicopters are strictly prohibited from flying over the deep quarry. The reason is as follows - a huge funnel causes turbulence of air masses, in which aircrafts cannot maneuver safely.
2. The walls of the quarry are incredibly high, and they contain danger not only for helicopters. There is an increased risk of landslides here.

According to rumors local residents They are afraid that one day a huge quarry could swallow up the adjacent territories, including those that are built up for human habitation, but these are just urban legends in the village of Mirny.

Ecological city of the future on the site of a former diamond mine

Today, the empty huge pit is of interest to scientists, and ideas are already emerging to create an eco-city in this funnel. The head of the Moscow architectural bureau Nikolai Lyutomsky shared his plans for an incredible solution. “The main part of the project is a concrete structure of enormous scale, which will act as a kind of plug, bursting the quarry from the inside. A dome transparent to light will cover the top of the foundation pit, and it is planned to install solar panels on it.

Despite the harsh climate of Yakutia, there are quite a lot of clear days a year, and the batteries can generate about 200 MW of electricity. It will be enough to meet the needs of the future city. In addition, you can use the heat of the Earth, and if in winter the air temperature is minus 60 degrees Celsius, then the soil temperature at a depth below 150 meters will be positive (below permafrost). This fact adds energy efficiency to the future project. The city is planned to be divided into three parts:

1. Upper will be used for permanent residence of people. It will contain residential buildings, buildings and structures of socio-cultural and administrative significance;
2. Middle tier- an area where there will be a forest and a park area designed to purify the air in the city;
3. Lower tier will be a so-called vertical farm - agricultural products will be grown here to meet the needs of the city.

The total planned area of ​​the project is 3 million square meters. The city will be able to accommodate up to 10,000 tourists, farm employees and service personnel.

On August 21, 2009, a new significant date in the history of diamond mining, the Mir underground mine was launched in Mirny. This is the apogee of many years of work of thousands of people, a powerful production unit of AK ALROSA, which allows the extraction of about 1 million tons of ore containing diamonds. In recent years, Russia has confidently held the palm in diamond mining, thanks to the ALROSA company. During the year, diamonds worth $1.7 billion were exported, and most of falls on European countries.

A kimberlite pipe is a vertical or nearly vertical geological body that was formed as a result of a breakthrough through gases. This pillar is truly different gigantic size. The kimberlite pipe has a shape that resembles a huge carrot or glass. Its upper part is a giant conical bulge, but with depth it gradually narrows and finally turns into a vein. In fact, such a geological body is a kind of ancient volcano, the ground part of which was largely destroyed due to erosion processes.

What is kimberlite?

This material is which consists of phlogopite, pyrope, olivine and other minerals. Kimberlite is black in color with greenish and bluish tints. At the moment, more than one and a half thousand bodies of the mentioned material are known, ten percent of which belong to the diamond rock. Experts note that approximately 90% of all diamond reserves are concentrated in kimberlite pipes, and the remaining 10% in lamproite pipes.

Mysteries related to the origin of diamonds

Despite many studies carried out in the field of diamond deposits, modern scientists are still unable to explain some of the features associated with the origin and existence of these precious stones.

Riddle one: why the kimberlite pipe is located exclusively on ancient platforms and shields, which are the most stable and stable blocks earth's crust? After all, the thickness of these layers reaches 40 kilometers of rock consisting of basalts, granites, etc. What kind of force is needed to make such a breakthrough?! Why does a kimberlite pipe pierce a powerful platform, and not a thinner one, say, the ocean floor, which is only ten kilometers thick, or transition zones at the boundaries of oceans with continents? After all, in these areas there are hundreds. Geologists are not able to answer this question.

The next mystery is the amazing shape of the kimberlite pipe. In fact, it does not look like a pipe at all, but rather like a huge cone on a thin leg that goes deep into the depths.

The third mystery concerns the unusual shape of the minerals in such rocks. All minerals that crystallize under molten magma conditions form well-cut crystals. Examples include apatite, zircon, olivine, garnet, and ilmenite. They are widespread in kimberlites, but do not have crystalline faces, but resemble. All attempts by geologists to find an answer to this riddle have led nowhere. At the same time, diamonds located next to the mentioned minerals have the ideal shape of octahedrons, which are characterized by sharp edges.

What was the name of the first kimberlite pipe?

The first of these geological bodies that were found and developed by people is located in the south of the African continent in the Kimberley province. The name of this area has become a common noun for all such bodies, as well as for the rock containing diamonds. This first pipe is called the "Big Hole" and is considered the largest quarry developed by humans without the use of machinery. Currently, it has completely exhausted itself and is the main attraction of the city. From 1866 to 1914, the first kimberlite pipe produced 2,722 micrograms of diamonds, amounting to 14.5 million carats. About 50 thousand people worked in the quarry, who used shovels and picks to extract about 22.5 million tons of soil. The development area is 17 hectares, its perimeter is 1.6 km, and its width is 463 m. The depth of the quarry was 240 meters, but after the end of mining it was filled with waste rock. Currently, the “Big Hole” is an artificial lake, the depth of which is only 40 meters.

The largest diamond quarry

Diamond mining in Russia began in the middle of the last century with the discovery in 1954 of the Zarnitsa deposit, which was 32 hectares in size. A year later, a second kimberlite diamond pipe was found in Yakutia, and it was given the name “Mir”. The city of Mirny grew up around this deposit. Today, the mentioned kimberlite pipe (the photo will help the reader imagine the enormity of this diamond deposit) is considered the largest in the world. The depth of the quarry is 525 meters, and the diameter is 1.2 km. Open-pit diamond mining ceased in 2004. Currently, an underground mine is being built to mine the remaining reserves, the extraction of which by open-pit mining is dangerous and unprofitable. According to experts, the development of the tube in question will continue for at least another 30 years.

History of the Mir kimberlite pipe

The development of the field was carried out in harsh climatic conditions. In order to break through the permafrost, it was necessary to blast the rock with dynamite. Already in the 60s of the last century, the deposit produced 2 kg of diamonds per year, and 20 percent of them were of jewelry quality and, after cutting, were supplied to jewelry stores as diamonds. The rest were used for industrial purposes. From 1957 to 2001, the Mir quarry produced diamonds with a total value of $17 billion. During this period, the quarry expanded so much that freight transport had to travel 8 kilometers from the surface to the bottom along a spiral road. Helicopters were strictly forbidden to fly over the object, since the huge funnel simply sucked in all aircraft. The high walls of the quarry are also dangerous for ground transport and people working in mining: there is a risk of landslide. Today, scientists are developing a project for an eco-city, which should be located in a quarry. To do this, it is planned to cover the pit with a translucent dome, on which solar panels will be installed. They plan to divide the space of the future city into tiers: the upper one will be for a residential area, the middle one will be for creating a forest park area, and the lower one will have agricultural purposes.

Conclusion

Diamond mining has centuries-old history. As new deposits were discovered and explored ones were depleted, leadership passed first from India to Brazil, and then to South Africa. At the moment, the leading position is occupied by Botswana, the second place is occupied by Russia.

Now let's look at the creation of human hands.

Rumors about the presence of precious stones in the territory of Yakutia and the western lands bordering it began to appear at the beginning of the 19th century.

After the civil war, teacher Pyotr Starovatov met an old man in Kempendai, who said that two years ago he had found a shiny stone the size of a match head on one of the local rivers and sold it to a merchant, who gave for it a bag of cereal, two bottles of vodka and five bags of tea. Later, another man told him that he had found precious stones on the banks of the Chona and Kempendijk rivers.

Targeted searches for diamonds on the territory of the Siberian Platform began for the first time in 1947-1948 along the Nizhnyaya and Podkamennaya Tunguska. In the fall of 1948, a group of geologists led by G. Fanstein began prospecting work on the Chona and Vilyui rivers, and on August 7, 1949, they found the first diamond on a sand spit called Sokolina, and further finds of more than 20 crystals revealed a diamond-bearing placer here. As a result of prospecting work in 1950-1953, several diamond-bearing placers were discovered in Yakutia.

In August 1953, geological party No. 132 of the Amakinsk expedition found the first diamond on the Malaya Botuobia River. On August 21 of the following year, 1954, geologist Larisa Popugaeva and worker Fyodor Belikov discovered the first kimberlite pipe in the USSR and named it “Zarnitsa”.

On June 3, 1955, a geological party with geologists Ekaterina Elagina, Yuri Khabardin, Viktor Avdeenko and several workers discovered a diamond-bearing pipe, which turned out to be the largest with the richest diamond content. They called it “Peace” and sent the following telegram to the authorities: “We lit the peace pipe, the tobacco is excellent...”.

Clickable 1920 px

In the same year, other diamond-bearing pipes were discovered in Yakutia, including Udachnaya, Marshrutnaya, and Sytykanskaya. 1955 was a very good year for geologists. 15 primary diamond deposits were discovered, as well as several industrial diamond placers. The search for diamonds continued, and by 1959, 120 were registered in Yakutia. kimberlite pipes.

The Mir pipe is located closer to the main transport artery of Yakutia - the Lena River than the Udachnaya, Sytykanskaya, and Zarnitsa pipes, so its exploration began immediately after its discovery. In 1959, stripping work began at the Mir quarry. A year later, the first stationary beneficiation plant was launched and the country received the first industrial diamonds from the Mir pipe. In February 1959, equipment and cargo began to be transported to Mirny along the Ust-Kut - Mukhtuya (Lensk) winter road. That same year, the USSR sold the first batch of Yakut diamonds with a total volume of 13,000 carats on the world market.

Clickable 4000 px, panorama

Processing plant No. 3 was put into production on October 21, 1966. This factory operates to this day and for many years was the largest.

Diamond mining in Yakutia is a very difficult business due to permafrost and underground mineralized water. Quarry "Mir" - nice illustration such conditions.

The Mir diamond-bearing pipe has the following parameters:

• Depth - 450 m.
• External diameter - 100-1200 m.
• Bottom diameter - 310 - 160 m.
• The total volume of ore extracted is 165 million cubic meters. m
• The influx of underground mineralized water is 150 cubic meters. m/hour
• The length of the spiral road from the surface to the bottom of the quarry is 7.7 km
• The design depth of open pit mining is 525 m.
• The explored depth of the ore body is up to 1200 m.

By 2001, Mir had become too deep and dangerous for workers. It was decided to stop open-pit diamond mining. Today it is carried out using the mine method. The quarry itself has now been converted into a local landmark. Installed above it Observation deck and a memorial sign. The mine is being mothballed for preparation of underground mining of deeper horizons - since it has been explored that the depth of diamonds in Mir exceeds a kilometer.

Mirny is a city of diamond miners. This is probably why it attracts the close attention of many today. business people all over the world. The Mir diamond-bearing pipe, discovered by geologists in the summer of 1955, gave its name to a workers’ settlement that grew up among the untrodden taiga and became a city three and a half years later.

Over the past five decades, the small tent village has become a modern industrial city with nine-story comfortable houses and asphalt roads; and the Yakutalmaz trust, which took the first steps in developing a new business for Russia - diamond mining - turned into the world-famous joint stock company ALROSA, leading diamond mining not only in the Sakha Republic, but also far beyond its borders, a business partner of a transnational company De Beers.

How far away June 55 seems today, when the now historic telegram with the text “Lighted the pipe of Peace. Excellent tobacco" served as the starting point for the development of our city with the most peaceful name in the world. In 1956, commercial operation of the tube began. On May 1, 2001, open-pit mining at the Mir pipe was completed and a huge crater in the cold Yakut soil became perhaps the most impressive landmark of the diamond mining city.

Over the course of 44 years, 170 million cubic meters of rock mass were removed from the harsh Yakut depths. Day by day the quarry deepened into last years BelAZ workers, transporting diamond-bearing ore for processing, descended along the “Mirny serpentine” to a depth of more than half a kilometer. The one-way route was 7.5 kilometers.

Today, the construction of the Mir underground mine continues, since the explored depth of the ore body is 1 kilometer 200 meters.

Mirny is home to 39.5 thousand residents, and the population of the Mirny district is more than 85.5 thousand. The area of ​​the Mirny district is impressive - 165.8 thousand square kilometers. The district includes: settlements, such as the city of Udachny, the villages of Aikhal, Chernyshevsky, Svetly, Almazny, the villages of Arylakh, Tas-Yuryakh, Syuldyukar.

Residents of the last three are mainly engaged in agriculture; In addition, an oil refinery is being built in Tas-Yuryakh. Chernyshevsky is a settlement of power engineers, the Vilyuisk hydroelectric power station-1 and hydroelectric power station-2 are located here. In the hydraulic construction village of Svetly, the third stage of the Vilyue hydroelectric power station was put into operation. In Udachny and Aikhal, two large mining and processing plants are located at the diamond deposits.

During the navigation period, part of the cargo for northerners is delivered by water to Lensk, located 240 kilometers from Mirny, and then transported by cars. But the main mode of transport is an airplane. There is nowhere in the North without aviation; it serves to transport not only passengers, but also most cargo. The runway of Mirny Airport allows it to accommodate such transport giants as Il-76 and Ruslan.

What is there in Mirny today? Two diamond processing factories, an airport, a four-story hotel, 10 restaurants, bars and cafes, 2 museums and 2 swimming pools, a city park and stadium, 3 libraries. There is an art school where children learn music and visual arts, and a small art gallery. There is a modern Palace of Culture, where many Mirny groups practice, many of them are well known outside the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

Mirny's intellectual potential has always been quite high for a provincial town. Probably the fact is that even in the first years of development of this region, extraordinary and interesting people came here. And the main type of activity required certain “levels”, because there was no diamond mining industry in Russia in those years, and a new business always requires advanced thinking and views. Residents of Novosibirsk and Riga, Muscovites and Leningraders, residents of central cities with large scientific centers came here to live and work. This affected both the rapid development of production and the cultural life of the city.

The Yakutniproalmaz Research Institute has existed in Mirny for many years.

In March 1994, a branch of the Yakut State University named after M.K. was opened in Mirny. Ammosova. In June 1999, by decree of the President of the Republic, the Mirny branch was transformed into the Polytechnic Institute.

The history of the regional newspaper “Mirninsky Rabochiy” spans almost four and a half decades. The newspaper is not the only mass media: there is also the Almazny Krai television and radio company. The city has its own poets and artists, the literary association “Kimberlit” and the club “Ex Libris”.

Peaceful lives his own life. It experiences the same difficulties as the whole country, rejoices in successes and struggles with difficulties. And, of course, the main wealth of the city is not diamonds, but people. Because the people in the North are simply wonderful - hospitable and welcoming, able to come to the rescue in time and lend their shoulder in difficult times. And we can talk about this, without exaggeration, to this special people for a long time.

The Mir quarry is also famous for the fact that the strongest people “break out” from its crevices. water flows with manifestations of salt, oil and gas, which is undoubtedly dangerous for mining operations. That is why the system of ore mining with caving, which was so advocated by representatives of the Moscow State Mining University, was rejected. Apparently, they were haunted by the story of the “rapid rise” of the famous Premier quarry (South Africa), which switched to underground mining and then collapsed. The absurd comparison of diamond deposits in the south of the African continent and the North-East of Russia suffered a crushing fiasco; Moscow apologists of not only an unpromising, but also a dangerous idea were left with nothing. Specialists and scientists from the Yakutniproalmaz and Gipronickel institutes defended their unyielding position and development methods with full filling of mined-out space.

Of course, one of the most important areas - the project "Dry conservation" of the Mir quarry, developed by the Yakutniproalmaz Institute, was designed to protect underground mining operations from severe water breakthroughs. The joint efforts of the Mirny Mining and Processing Plant and the Management Department of AK ALROSA contributed to the speedy resolution of the most “sick” problem - the water-bearing problem.

In parallel with these works, the Mirny Mine Construction Department (Head Konstantin Plokhan) was excavating a drainage adit. The mine builders showed great courage in conditions of increased danger of water surges and instability of the rock. In subsequent years, the Almaz-Antarex enterprise drilled four drainage wells from the side of the Mir quarry. According to the work plan, powerful pumps were lowered into the wells, which are designed to pump out brine water, which is extremely undesirable for underground work. Pumps from the German company Ritz were installed to pump out water from the bottom of the MIR quarry. And in 2004, MGOK was already finalizing the remaining volumes under the “Dry Conservation” project.

Touching on the topic of new methods, I would like to touch upon the topic of tunneling in a special way. According to the classical scheme, special methods of shaft sinking (freezing or plugging with various mixtures) are used for large water inflows, unstable or fractured rocks. All special methods can be divided into groups: fencing the bottom of the shaft from unstable rocks and water with special support and tunneling under compressed air, temporary or permanent isolation of water (artificial freezing of rocks, plugging by injection through special wells under pressure of cement or clay-cement mortar, chemical strengthening soils, artificially lowering the groundwater level and drilling shafts). In this case, freezing columns up to 540 m deep were drilled around the trunk and with their help a dense, ice wall was created, designed to protect the trunk from water and oil. Currently, the cage shaft has a depth of more than 1 km, and the skip shaft has the same depth.

In any case, the problematic issue of ensuring mine safety cannot be forgotten. Therefore, during the construction of the Mir mine, great attention was paid to the operation of the freezing station (Equipment from the Danish company York) so that it operated according to the design regime. Without this equipment and freezing of the soil, it was impossible to ensure the safety of the underground. Thus, seven years have passed since the start of construction of the underground mine, accompanied by a lot of production problems, rush jobs, noisy operational headquarters. A lot of effort was spent on sinking cage and skip shafts with fastening tubings, reinforcement, installing buildings for lifting machines of both shafts, commissioning the transport gallery and the main fan installation. The objects of the surface complex of the MIR mine, on which vital activity in the mine directly depends, were carefully and systematically erected. Several years ago, work began systematically on the construction of the first horizons.

from here photo

In 2008, the underground mine put into operation a skip shaft complex, skip hoisting machines, two 7-cubic-meter skips, as well as a cage for transporting people and lowering goods. From February to August 2008, commissioning work was completed on the main fan installation, which performs the most important function - providing ventilation of underground mine workings. At the end of December 2008, mining and capital works section No. 8, headed by A. Velichko and foreman A. Ozol, carried out the excavation of a conveyor crosscut and reached diamond tube. The author of these lines, under the thickness of the earth 650 meters, 150 meters from the bottom of the famous MIR quarry at horizon 310, was able to touch the treasured ore body. In 2009, the mine builders achieved a serious task - connecting between the -210m and -310m horizons, which made it possible to deliver cargo to all layered runs of the first operational block of the subway. Secondly, it ensures reliable ventilation of the mine. By the way, it must be said that the first production block was promptly prepared for mining operations or, at the miner’s term, the mining operation. In March 2009, an important operation was completed - the sliding of the above-mine structure to accommodate a lifting unit, the function of which is to lower workers to underground levels, deliver materials, equipment, and also issue rock. And in the spring of 2009, commissioning work began. The Mir mine was commissioned in 2009.

August 21, 2009 will be remembered as a significant date in modern history diamond mining: Mirny pompously celebrated the launch of the first stage of the MIR underground mine. This is the crown of many years of work, significantly strengthening the position of AK ALROSA in all aspects. The MIR underground mine has become a powerful production unit of AK ALROSA, capable of producing 1 million tons of diamond ore. Now it’s time to complete the construction of the stowage complex. Much will depend on the progress of its construction and equipping.

—> Satellite images (Google Maps) <—

sources
http://sakhachudo.narod.ru
http://gorodmirny.ru

In Yakutia, near the city of Mirny, there is the largest diamond quarry in the world by total volume - the Mir kimberlite pipe (the city of Mirny appeared after the discovery of the pipe and was named in its honor). The quarry has a depth of 525 meters and a diameter of 1.2 kilometers.
The formation of a kimberlite pipe occurs during a volcanic eruption, when gases from the bowels of the earth burst out through the earth's crust. The shape of such a tube resembles a funnel or glass. A volcanic explosion removes kimberlite from the bowels of the Earth, a rock that sometimes contains diamonds. The breed is named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, where an 85-carat (16.7 gram) diamond was found in 1871, sparking the Diamond Rush.
On June 13, 1955, geologists searching for a kimberlite pipe in Yakutia saw a tall larch tree whose roots had been exposed by a landslide. The fox dug a deep hole under it. Based on the characteristic bluish color of the soil scattered by the fox, geologists realized that it was kimberlite. A coded radiogram was immediately sent to Moscow: “We lit the peace pipe, the tobacco is excellent.” Soon after 2800 km. off-road, convoys of vehicles flocked to the site of the discovery of the kimberlite pipe. The working village of Mirny grew up around the diamond deposit; now it is a city with a population of 36 thousand people.

The development of the field took place in extremely difficult climatic conditions. To break through the permafrost, it had to be blown up with dynamite. In the 1960s, 2 kg were already produced here. diamonds per year, of which 20% were of jewelry quality and, after cutting and turning into diamonds, could be supplied to a jewelry salon. The remaining 80% of diamonds were used for industrial purposes. The South African company De Beers was concerned about the rapid development of Mir, which was forced to buy Soviet diamonds in order to control prices on the world market. The management of De Beers agreed on the arrival of its delegation in Mirny. The leadership of the USSR agreed to this on the condition that Soviet specialists would visit diamond quarries in South Africa. A De Beers delegation arrived in Moscow in 1976 to fly to Mirny, but the South African guests were deliberately delayed by endless meetings and banquets in Moscow, so when the delegation finally reached Mirny, they had only 20 minutes to inspect the quarry. However, South African experts were still amazed by what they saw, for example, by the fact that the Russians did not use water when processing ore. Although this is understandable: after all, 7 months a year in Mirny there is sub-zero temperature and therefore the use of water is simply impossible.
Between 1957 and 2001, the Mir quarry produced $17 billion worth of diamonds. Over the years, the quarry expanded so much that trucks had to travel 8 km along a spiral road. from bottom to surface. The Russian company ALROSA, which owns the Mir quarry, stopped open-pit ore mining in 2001 because... this method has become dangerous and ineffective. Scientists have found that diamonds lie at a depth of more than 1 km, and at such a depth, it is not a quarry that is suitable for mining, but an underground mine, which, according to the plan, will reach its design capacity of one million tons of ore per year already in 2012. In total, the development of the field is planned for another 34 years.
Helicopters are strictly prohibited from flying over the quarry, because a huge funnel sucks aircraft into itself. The high walls of the quarry are fraught with danger not only for helicopters: there is a threat of landslides, and one day the quarry may swallow the surrounding, including built-up, areas. Scientists are thinking about a project for an eco-city in a now empty huge pit. The head of the Moscow architectural bureau Nikolai Lyutomsky talks about his plans: “The main part of the project is a huge concrete structure, which will become a kind of “plug” for the former quarry and will burst it from the inside. On top of the pit will be covered with a translucent dome on which solar panels will be installed. Climate in Yakutia is harsh, but there are many clear days and the batteries will be able to generate about 200 MW of electricity, which should more than meet the needs of the future city. In addition, you can use the heat of the Earth. In winter, in Mirny the air cools to -60 ° C, but at a depth below 150 meters (that is, below permafrost) the ground temperature is positive, which adds energy efficiency to the project. The city space is proposed to be divided into three tiers: the lower one - for growing agricultural products (the so-called vertical farm), the middle one - a forest park area that purifies the air, and the upper one for permanent residence of people, which has a residential function and serves to house administrative and sociocultural buildings and structures. The total area of ​​the city will be 3 million square meters, and up to 10,000 people will be able to live here - tourists, service personnel and farm workers."

These elegant, outwardly fragile, incredibly beautiful stones with the ability to reflect and refract rays, scattering magical sparks of light around them, were once thrown through volcanic vents onto the surface of planet Earth. In our time, these volcanoes have long been extinct, their above-ground part as a result of erosion processes has disappeared without a trace, but the rocks, stones and other substances frozen in the crater have not disappeared anywhere.

Scientists learned that these vents contain a huge amount of diamonds only in the middle of the last century, when a huge diamond deposit, nicknamed the kimberlite pipe, was found on the territory of the African continent (it was later discovered that such natural formations contain about 90% of natural diamond reserves planets).

People could not ignore such an event - and active searches for such deposits began all over the world. Some countries, such as Botswana, Russia, Canada, South Africa, Angola, were lucky, and having discovered the desired rock, they almost immediately began to develop promising finds, digging a deep hole and creating a huge crater.

Subsequently, scientists noticed an interesting feature of such holes: it is extremely dangerous for helicopters and other aircraft to fly over man-made craters, since the huge hole literally sucks them into itself.

Education

As for the process of formation of a kimberlite pipe and diamonds in it, it looks quite interesting. Several billion years ago, a breakthrough of magmatic solutions and gases occurred in the bowels of the earth (and it is interesting that it did not happen in a thin part of the earth’s crust, the thickness of which is about 10 km, but the explosion pierced a powerful platform 40 km thick).

As a result, a conical-shaped channel appeared, more similar to a champagne glass: the deeper it goes underground, the narrower it becomes and at a certain depth it turns into a vein.

The crater opening of this channel is usually from five hundred meters to one and a half kilometers. After the eruption, breccias (volcanic fragments) and gray-green tuff, the so-called kimberlite, were frozen in the crater of this crater - a rock consisting of phlogopite, garnet, olivine, carbonates and other minerals.

When these minerals reach the earth's surface by other means, their form is always well-cut crystals. But in the composition of kimberlite there are no such faces, and the grains are round in shape. As for diamonds, they appear on the surface in a ready-made form with sharp edges that can be used to cut glass without processing.

Despite the fact that a kimberlite pipe is usually 10% filled with gems, extracting diamonds from the rock is a rather labor-intensive process, since only about 1 carat of gems, which is 0.2 g, is extracted from one ton of kimberlite.

The first kimberlite pipe, called the “Big Hole,” was found in the mid-19th century. in South Africa, in the Kimberley province (where the name of both the diamond-containing rock and the vent itself came from). This deposit is also the largest quarry that was created by people without the use of any technology.

To create a hole of such a scale in the earth's crust, more than 50 thousand miners were involved, who developed the quarry using shovels and picks. As a result, over fifty years, more than 22 million tons of soil were extracted from the bowels of the earth and more than 2.7 thousand kg of diamonds (about 14.5 million carats) were extracted.

Despite the fact that at the moment the “Big Hole” deposit has completely exhausted itself, the diamond quarry still remains a local attraction, since for more than a century it has held the glory of the largest man-made hole in our world: its area is about 17 hectares, along the perimeter the hole has 1 .6 km, and the width is 463 m.

As for the depth, at present it is not very great, but previously it went down to 240 m. When diamond mining stopped, the deposit was filled up to 215 m, after which underground streams filled the bottom of the quarry with water and created a lake. Currently the hole is 40 m deep.

Quarry "Mir"

In the middle of the last century, on the territory of Yakutia in Russia, geologists found several kimberlite pipes at once - the first was “Zarnitsa”, discovered in 1954. Few gems were found in it, but the discovery of this vent prompted geologists to continue the search work.

And as it turned out, not in vain: the very next year, one of the largest diamond deposits of our planet called “Mir” was discovered in these parts (on the map you can find it near the city of Mirny at the following coordinates: 62°31'42″N. latitude 113°59'39″E). It is noteworthy that it was here that the largest gem in Russia, called “XXVI Congress of the CPSU,” weighing 342.5 carats (that’s a little more than 68 grams) was found.

The country's authorities paid great attention to the development of this Mir kimberlite pipe, attracted a huge number of people - and after some time, among the wild and uninhabited region, first a village was built, and then the city of Mirny, located more than a thousand kilometers from Yakutsk. The settlement was immediately placed so that the kimberlite pipe was right next to Mirny.

Work on the development of the Mir deposit in permafrost conditions (in winter the temperature here is often -60°C) was extremely difficult - it was very difficult to work with the earth and the soil had to be undermined with dynamite. Within a few years, the quarry produced about 2 kg of diamonds per year, of which 20% had jewelry value, and the rest were used for industrial purposes.

At the moment, it is believed that the Mir quarry produces the largest amount of diamonds in Russia and a quarter of all diamonds on our planet (and this, despite the fact that in size it is still somewhat inferior to another similar deposit found in these parts - the kimberlite pipe “Udachnaya”): its diameter is 1.2 km, and its depth is 525 m.

Several years ago, diamond mining in the quarry was stopped after the depth of the hole reached critical dimensions, and all work moved to the Mir underground mine. Working underground is difficult in itself, and in this case it is further complicated by the fact that underground water constantly floods the mine, as a result of which it has to be constantly pumped out and directed into natural faults that were found in the earth's crust.

Work in the Mir kimberlite pipe is not going to be stopped in the near future, since geologists have discovered that a huge amount of diamonds lie at a depth of more than one kilometer, and therefore the Mir deposit can be developed for more than thirty years.

Quarry "Udachnaya"

The largest kimberlite pipe in Russia is also located in Yakutia, 20 km from the Arctic Circle (on the map it can be found at the following coordinates: 66°25′ N 112°19′ E). Its parameters are:

• Width – 2 thousand m;
• Length – 1.6 thousand m;
• Depth – 530 m.

This hole actually consists of two pipes adjacent to each other - Western and Eastern. In terms of their characteristics, gems from different vents are quite different from each other.

Despite the fact that this diamond quarry was opened in the mid-50s, it began to be actively developed only in the early eighties. Currently, gems are mined in an open-pit manner, but since the depth of the deposit has become critical for this type of mining, an underground mine has recently begun operating here.

Experts say that most of the diamonds from the Udachnaya Kimberlite pipe have already been removed from the bowels of the earth, and some of the finds are amazing. For example, a stone was recently found here containing about 30 thousand diamonds, which is a million times higher than their usual concentration.