
9800 Feet Underground at Kidd Creek Mine in Northern Ontario, Canada - wmat
http://blogs.agu.org/martianchronicles/2011/08/01/9800-feet/
======
kerryfalk
This is the second time I've seen a story on mining hit HN, it always strikes
me as a bit odd as the two worlds are miles apart. But I find them both
fascinating (I work in both industries concurrently - by day I'm working for a
production drill manufacturer and by night I'm a founder of a startup).

We manufacture underground production drills and have drills at every major
underground mine in Canada and many of the other large underground mines
around the world. We have equipment at Kidd Creek which is the deepest mine in
Canada. When I first began to learn about the conditions underground the first
thing that surprised me was the temperature in the mines. It's hot!

In some mines it's so hot that a human can't comfortably work for long, or at
all. AngloGold Ashanti's TauTona mine in South Africa is sitting somewhere
around 3.9km (Nearly 13,000 feet). The rock face in TauTona at its current
depth reaches 60C. This is where it starts to get even more interesting for
me. At these depths is hazardous for a human to work but _there remains
precious metals at greater depths_. The technology to reach it and automate
the extraction of these minerals is non-trivial and the current tech isn't
advanced enough to reach it reliably. There are interesting problems that
integrate software and heavy-duty hardware (30,000lb drills).

~~~
rudyfink
For me, I think of mine stories like space stories. They both tend to have
elements of designing and applying technology to overcome the challenges of
nature in extreme conditions. The common ideas of adventure, exploration, and
achieving new understanding to see things (and profit) no one else has ever
seen before also help.

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vaporstun
I was interested in what they mine there, so I searched around and found this
very informative page:
<http://www.infomine.com/minesite/minesite.asp?site=kiddcreek>

The overview from that page:

The Kidd Mine is in northern Ontario, 500 miles northwest of Toronto. The mine
began operation in 1966, producing copper, zinc, indium, cadmium, silver and
sulphuric acid. The deposit is one of the largest and richest volcanogenic
massive sulphide deposits in the world.

There is an underground mine, and metallurgical facilities consisting of a
copper concentrator, smelter and refinery, and zinc, cadmium, indium plant,
liquid sulphur dioxide and sulfuric acid plant. Kidd's concentrating, smelting
and refining processes are among the most advanced in the world.

The mine currently employs 1400 people and operates 7 days a week with two
12-hour shifts. The properties comprise 14 patented half lots covering 896
hectares of freehold mining land.

Kidd Creek has three shafts known as the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 mines. Mine D
is currently being developed to access reserves below the 6,800 foot to the
9,500 foot level. Commissioning for Mine D expansion began in 2004, and is
scheduled to increase the operation's ultimate capacity, in stages, to
2.7Mt/yr of ore to 2012 and deepen Kidd Creek Mine to a final depth of 9,500
ft and extending the life of mine to 2017. Kidd is the deepest base metal mine
in the world.

~~~
latch
I wonder what happened to shaft No. 1 ?

~~~
jordanb
I believe it's the open pit, which has been discontinued.

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powertower
[http://blogs.agu.org/martianchronicles/files/2011/07/IMG_552...](http://blogs.agu.org/martianchronicles/files/2011/07/IMG_5527.jpg)

> A massive chain of unknown purpose along the corridor to the smaller,
> secondary lift.

I don't see how you can walk passed a giant chain laying 9000 feet underground
and not ask anyone about it (what it's purpose is).

~~~
ars
It could be he didn't notice it till he looked at the photos.

When you are in a new area and everything is new to you, you can't look at
everything.

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rwmj
TIL: According to Wikipedia, although there are deeper mines in the world, the
bottom of this one is closer to the centre of the Earth than all others. This
is because the Earth is oblate, "fatter" around the equator where the other
mines are, and more squat near Canada.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kidd_Mine#Dep...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kidd_Mine#Depth)

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Oblate_sphero...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Oblate_spheroid)

~~~
chadgeidel
Thanks for that - I was going to ask just that question! (which is the
"closest to the center of the earth" mine in the world)

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robchez
I am a Mining/Mechanical Project engineer and have had the extreme pleasure of
visiting a lot of these underground operations (although Kidd is still on the
bucket list!)

Due to precious and base metal prices as they are, there are a lot of mining
deposits that were once not viable, but now seem quite profitable. There is a
huge push to deeper levels and this is leading to some awesome engineering
advances in the field (that I am proud to be a part of).

Mining is a market for hackers waiting to be tapped(!). This industry pushes
two things, safety and efficiency. These mines work 24hrs a day, 7 days a
week, any loss of work costs serious money. If you could develop software to
have mines be both safer and more efficient, you have a signed pay check.

~~~
wmat
I'd be curious to know what kind of software systems are in place now?
Googling turns up some pretty big players, like
<http://www.gemcomsoftware.com/>, <http://www.minesight.com/>, etc. I
interviewed once many years ago at Vale-Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and at the
time they were still hiring Fortran developers.

~~~
robchez
Design software. Forget the scheduling and geology software, its managed by
the big guys.

Every mining/mechanical engineer I know uses a collection of spreadsheets they
have created/collated. It's cumbersome, its crap, its error prone.

* Materials Handling (Conveyor design etc.)

* Pumping (Dewatering, supply lines etc.)

Other areas which need serious shakeup are drawing and document control. There
are junior miners starting every other week and if you can sell your software
to them from the beginning to manage there document/drawing control you are
set for at least 5-10 years of service/subscripton revenue as well.

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smokey_the_bear
One of my most memorable childhood trips was to the Soudan mine in Minnesota.
It was only 2350 feet deep, but we got to ride down in a similar elevator and
my ears popped. I'd never flown before, so it was a very foreign sensation.
The mine itself was something both alien (complete darkness, solid rock) and
cartoonish (cart on tracks).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soudan_Underground_Mine_State_P...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soudan_Underground_Mine_State_Park)

~~~
logic
Soudan Mine is really quite a sight, if you've never done a mine tour before.
If you have any interest at all in the neutrino work happening at Fermilab, be
sure to take the scientific tour as well as the tour of the mine proper.

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AdamTReineke
According to Wikipedia, the average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is just about
1200 feet deeper than that.

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Sukotto
If you're interested in mining, or big machines in general, consider attending
the quad-annual MINExpo. The next one's in Las Vegas, Sept 2012
<http://www.minexpo.com>

This is the sort of totally awesome stuff you see there:
<http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=MINExpo>

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phamilton
Reminds me of the Eureka episode where they plan to drop Fargo down a 10,000
pit...

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delinquentme
The question is, what will we put our minds to?

