Diamonds, Gold, Silver, Copper Open-Pit Mines In The World
The Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott Copper Mine, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, an international mining and exploration company headquartered in the United Kingdom. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.6 miles (0.97 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (770 ha). It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine. The mine experienced a massive landslide in April of 2013 and a smaller slide in September of 2013.
Udachnaya was discovered on June 15, 1955, just two days after the discovery of the diamond pipe Mir by Soviet geologist Vladimir Shchukin and his team. It is more than 600 metres (1,970 ft) deep, making it the third deepest open-pit mine in the world (after Bingham Canyon Mine and Chuquicamata).
The nearby settlement of Udachny is named for the deposit.
As of 2010, 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 225.8 million carats of diamonds and an annual production capacity of 10.4 million carats
Chuquicamata, or Chuqui as it is more familiarly known, is by excavated volume the biggest open pit copper mine in the world, located in the north of Chile, just outside of Calama, 215 km northeast of Antofagasta and 1,240 km north of the capital, Santiago. The mine is owned and operated by Codelco, a Chilean state enterprise, since the Chilean nationalization of copper in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its depth of 850 metres (2,790 ft) makes it the second deepest open-pit mine in the world (after Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, USA).
The Diavik Diamond Mine is a diamond mine in the North Slave Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada, about 300 kilometres (190 mi) north of Yellowknife. It has become an important part of the regional economy, employing 700, grossing C$100 million in sales, and producing approximately 7.5 million carats (1,500 kg (3,300 lb)) of diamonds annually.[2] The area was surveyed in 1992 and construction began in 2001, with production commencing in January 2003. It is connected by an ice road and Diavik Airport with a 5,235 ft (1,596 m) gravel runway regularly accommodating Boeing 737 jet aircraft.
The Grasberg Mine is the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world. It is located in the province of Papua in Indonesia near Puncak Jaya, the highest mountain in Papua, and it has 19,500 employees. It is majority owned through a subsidiary by Freeport-McMoRan, which owns 90.64% of PT Freeport Indonesia, the principal operating subsidiary in Indonesia, including 9.36% owned through its wholly owned subsidiary, PT Indocopper Investama. The Government of Indonesia owns the remaining 9.36% of PT Freeport Indonesia. FCX operates under an agreement with the Government of Indonesia, which allows Freeport to conduct exploration, mining and production activities in a 24,700-acre area (Block A). It also conducts exploration activities in an approximate 500,000-acre area (Block B). All of Freeport's proven and probable mineral reserves and current mining operations are located in Block A. The 2006 production was 610,800 tonnes of copper; 58,474,392 grams of gold; and 174,458,971 grams of silver.
Diamond | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
00:02:01 1 Material properties
00:03:49 1.1 Thermodynamics
00:05:18 1.2 Crystal structure
00:06:13 1.3 Crystal habit
00:07:54 1.4 Mechanical properties
00:08:03 1.4.1 Hardness
00:09:41 1.4.2 Toughness
00:10:39 1.4.3 Yield strength
00:11:10 1.5 Electrical conductivity
00:11:57 1.6 Surface property
00:13:04 1.7 Chemical stability
00:13:40 1.8 Color
00:16:47 1.9 Identification
00:18:02 2 Geology
00:19:48 2.1 Surface distribution
00:22:10 2.2 Exploration
00:23:35 2.3 Ages
00:24:43 2.4 Origin in mantle
00:27:11 2.5 Carbon sources
00:28:40 2.6 Formation and growth
00:29:45 2.7 Transport to the surface
00:30:32 2.8 In space
00:31:34 3 Industry
00:31:57 3.1 Gem-grade diamonds
00:39:23 3.1.1 Cutting
00:42:12 3.1.2 Marketing
00:44:15 3.2 Industrial-grade diamonds
00:46:51 3.3 Mining
00:50:38 3.3.1 Political issues
00:52:21 4 Synthetics, simulants, and enhancements
00:52:32 4.1 Synthetics
00:54:54 4.2 Simulants
00:55:23 4.3 Enhancements
00:56:24 4.4 Identification
00:59:20 5 Stolen diamonds
01:00:50 6 History
01:02:23 7 See also
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SUMMARY
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Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. At room temperature and pressure, another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form, but diamond almost never converts to it. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are utilized in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth.
Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions being boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange or red. Diamond also has relatively high optical dispersion (ability to disperse light of different colors).
Most natural diamonds have ages between 1 billion and 3.5 billion years. Most were formed at depths between 150 and 250 kilometers (93 and 155 mi) in the Earth's mantle, although a few have come from as deep as 800 kilometers (500 mi). Under high pressure and temperature, carbon-containing fluids dissolved minerals and replaced them with diamonds. Much more recently (tens to hundreds of million years ago), they were carried to the surface in volcanic eruptions and deposited in igneous rocks known as kimberlites and lamproites.
Synthetic diamonds can be grown from high-purity carbon under high pressures and temperatures or from hydrocarbon gas by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Imitation diamonds can also be made out of materials such as cubic zirconia and silicon carbide. Natural, synthetic and imitation diamonds are most commonly distinguished using optical techniques or thermal conductivity measurements.