The Mirny Diamond Pit excavates a total of 1.5 billion tonnes of ore and produces 30,000 carats of diamonds per day
In 1955, three Soviet geographers, led by Yuri Habadin, sent a coded message to Moscow: "We lit the way to peace, and it was good. Two years later, three geologists were awarded the Lenin Prize, the Outstanding Contribution and the Order of Glory. Khrushchev once said at the meeting: After several expeditions from 1940 to 1950, the Soviet Union finally discovered the world's largest diamond deposit in Siberia, and it is estimated that its reserves will exceed 23% of the world's.
They discovered what would become the world-famous Mirni, and after forty-four years of excavation, a large pit was finally formed 525 meters deep and 1,200 meters wide.
What kind of "treasure land" should be there that can produce so many diamonds?
The European Geographical Society explains that most of the world's diamonds are between 12 and 33 billion years old, and South Africa has found four billion years old diamond rough rock - kimberlite (named after it). But Mirny is different because, according to scientists' research, it is less than 300 million years old, and its original mineral deposits, which are 20-25 kilometers deep in South Africa, equivalent to one-fifth of it.
That is, the diamond mines in Mirny were easily excavated, and in the fifties of the last century, Soviet scientists found 1500 gold mines on this land that could work in the field.
During a visit to Fence Rock in Yakutsk, a local guide told me a very confidential message: Russia announced plans to close the diamond mines in Mirny in 2001, but in fact it was the mines on the surface that were really blocked, and the Mirny mines were converted to underground mining since 2004.
Eventually, Milne took his cousin to work at Milne's diamond field and finally convinced us to go along.
After waiting for a week, the tour guide's cousin finally sent us our tour invitation, and then sent ** back with the passport.
During this time, I used all my connections, collected a lot of information about the Mirny mines, and went through thousands of documents, and came to a conclusion: the Soviet Union was supposed to start mining in 1956, but the severe cold of Mirny for seven months a year, with a minimum temperature of -65 degrees Celsius, forced our mining team to postpone for a year, and in order to avoid permanent permafrost settlement, we moved the diamond processing base to more than 20 kilometers away.
For the next 30 years, Mirnay produced around 10 million carats a year, of which about 20% was used to produce jewelry, the largest of which was discovered in 1980 and weighed 3425 carats, the market value at the time was $50 million, and it was not until 1990, when 340 meters were excavated, that the annual production of this diamond fell to 2 million carats.
According to the mineral report issued by the USSR in 1981, although the amount of mining in Mirny fell, the intensity of work did not decrease, on the contrary, although more minerals were discovered later, the amount of diamonds in it was far less than in the early days, so before the collapse of the USSR, they stopped mining.
From 1991 to 2004, there were two versions of the news that Mirny was closed, but in 2010, I found that one of the information published by Russia was "Mirny International Airport Expansion Project in 2002".
It stands to reason that if Mirny is really going out of business, why would he have to spend so much money to expand his own airport?In addition, 2002 can be described as "internal and external troubles" for Russia, with foreign blockades, restrictions on imports and exports, a domestic economic depression, and a sharp decline in national income, and a small city in the heart of Siberia (4000 kilometers from Moscow) with a population of only 38,000 people, it is a big problem to build an airport, no matter from which point of view, it is a big problem.
When our flight landed at Milne airport, I found out that Mirny was a very much needed place to expand, it was much more than Yakutsk or Magadan, Yakutsk is now open to the railway, Magadan also has the M56, but Mirny is not connected to the federal highway, and it is also more than 1,200 kilometers from the station, and it is located on the border of the Arctic Circle, there is a shortage of food, and thousands of people rely on the airport for daily necessities.
So, why don't you move out?Because Mirny's mine continues, and the production and area are much larger than before.
When it comes to the brand of diamonds, most Chinese people will know Jin Mouli, Zhou Mousheng and others, and the world's largest diamond company is not well known: De Beers, founded in 1888 and monopolized the entire industry in 1934, monopolized more than 95% of the world's diamonds**. Raul, the tour guide's cousin, works in the ** control room of the Beers-Milny branch, mainly managing the mining program and security.
The next day, he went to the ** control room, and Raul explained: "The Mirny mine is just a general statement, and the eight outer mines will be purified once at a transit station around the Mirny pit, then filtered again at Berezovka, seventeen kilometers away, and the last time into the final point of Almaz, and the last time into an underground base in Zarhan.
In all, there are nine diamond mines, two filtration and transfer stations, a processing plant, and a warehouse located underground.
In the Soviet construction program, Mirny belonged to the medium-sized city, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was elevated to the capital of Mirinsky, covering an area of 12,800 square kilometers, with a population of 720,000, of which more than half of the inhabitants live in Mir, and 90% of employment is related to mining. Therefore, it is difficult to see people walking in big cities in the city, even on Lenin Square in the center of the city, there are not many people.
When I asked about figures such as "per capita income, health care, education, welfare" with a shy face, Raul replied: "I don't know, not even my superiors, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you." ”
He couldn't understand the lives of ordinary people, so he focused on understanding diamonds, and led by two maintenance workers, they took an elevator into the mine, more than 500 meters underground.
As far as he knew, the Mirny pit was still the largest mine, but now it had been converted into a mine, with seven hundred and sixty people working on a rotational basis, two hundred of whom were responsible for repairs and repairs, and more than fifty for logistics.
After 2009, Russia applied a nickel ore mining machine developed by Norilsk company to diamond mining, a total of nine shield machines equipped with grinding wheels and saw blades, these shield machines are made of the latest 72-tooth quenched steel developed by Russia, but in the process of use, it is inevitable that there will be some damage, therefore, before changing shifts, they must carry out more than half an hour of maintenance, so as to ensure the normal operation of the machine.
With a loud and tooth-aching sound, the cut minerals are transported by the excavator's track to the tractor behind them, and according to what we have seen today, a shield machine needs to be equipped with a minimum of eight tractors to ensure the smooth progress of mining.
When the EPB advanced 100 meters, the staff behind it also had to install pipes and drainage systems here, which was only more than 30 meters away from Miller's diamond pit, and the diamond pit in Mirny was already tens of meters deep, so they had to pump water 24 hours a day.
Extending down along the water pipeline is the catchment area, each drilling machine corresponds to a mining area, each mining area should be equipped with more than ten pumping machines, and the water collection area of each mine can reach 400 cubic hours. "In order to prevent the diamonds from being washed away by the current, groundwater must be pumped into the sedimentation tank for purification and transported to the central pool at -310m, where it is transported to the surface with a super-powered pump," said one worker. ”
I roughly estimated that the tunnel was about 1,200 meters long, the deepest tunnel was about 470 meters below me, and according to the number of tunnels announced, the depth of the Mirny tunnel was about one kilometer, and the length of the tunnel was more than 40 kilometers.
Judging by the weighing device on the rail conveyor, after twelve hours, he had transported more than 400 tons of ore, and at a production of four to eight carats per tonne, the mine could transport more than two kilograms of diamonds a day.
After the ore is transported to the surface, it is immediately sent to the washing site, where the ore mined from the depths of the earth, hundreds of kilometers thick, is towed by a transport truck, and in less than half an hour, nine trucks are working. In addition, in order to prevent the staff from leaving or replacing the raw ore without permission, more than 300 monitoring probes and six weighing stations have been installed along the line, and every driver cannot stop to ensure that every piece of raw ore can be cleaned up.
Before cleaning, it is necessary to crush the raw ore three times, and all the raw ore is crushed into gravel below 5cm, and then sent to the next primary washing. According to the staff, the machine is also equipped with the best Russian diamond analysis instruments, and if anyone suspects that it is a diamond, it is taken to the laboratory for identification.
Underneath the washing site, there is a five-metre-large ring vibrator, about 11 metres high, with a total of nine floors for preliminary clean-up work. The crushed ore is poured down from above, the minerals of various sizes are sorted by multiple cleanings and sent to a secondary screening center 17 kilometers away, where they are tested for concentration with special equipment.
It is then sent to a specially developed isolation device in Russia for automated testing, which is graded by an intelligent system according to the characteristics of the light under X-ray irradiation. The selected diamonds are packed into a testing area for final manual identification, where a diamond requires three graders to be evaluated by hand due to its size, impurities, shape, color, etc.
A worker from Ukraine told me that Mirny's gems come in 16 sizes, 10 shapes, 5 qualities, 10 colors, and that her task is to scale each stone, which used to be called "very torturous", but now, with a high-precision microscope, everything is much easier.
The diamonds are presented in aluminium boxes of different sizes according to criteria such as fineness, color, size, etc., and are then valued by the jeweller on duty. So far, all diamonds have been labelled with information such as origin, age, appraiser and valuation, with medium and medium quality being stored in underground warehouses and less valuable being transported to Milan International Airport for transit.
With a strong desire for unknown information such as production and production value, the staff in charge of weighing was a little impatient with me, and finally said the general situation: the diamond mines in Mirny have excavated 1.5 billion tons of reserves (preliminary statistics), and since entering the underground mining, the daily output is about 30,000 kilograms, and this is only one mine in Mir, the other eight mines have not been counted.
As the two were talking, they suddenly heard a cheer in the laboratory, which was the most valuable "princess square" yellow gem today, weighing 33At 64 carats, if divided by the 4Cs, this diamond should be graded IF, which is the second highest among all diamonds.
It's a pity that this is a yellow diamond, if it doesn't have a color, it's worth about 5,000 dollars, and now, it's 50,000 or 60,000 dollars. ”
As he was leaving, Raul asked, "Do you want some?""I politely declined his kindness, saying that I like sparkling gemstones, but that doesn't mean anything about it.