The Udachnaya pipe (, ; ) is a
diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...
deposit in the Daldyn-
Alakit kimberlite
Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known as the main host matrix for diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an 83.5-Car ...
field in
Sakha Republic
Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million ...
,
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
.
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 that extracts rock or minerals from the earth.
Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...
,
and is located just outside the
Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the northernmost of the five major circle of latitude, circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth at about 66° 34' N. Its southern counterpart is the Antarctic Circle.
The Arctic Circl ...
at .
History
Udachnaya was discovered on 15 June 1955, just two days after the discovery of the diamond pipe
Mir
''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...
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 and
Chuquicamata
Chuquicamata ( ; referred to as Chuqui for short) is the largest open-pit mining, open pit copper Mining, mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, Chile, Calama, at above sea level. ...
).
The nearby settlement of
Udachny is named for the deposit.
, Udachnaya pipe is controlled by Russian diamond company
Alrosa
Alrosa () is a Russian group of diamond mining companies that specialize in exploration, mining, manufacture, and sale of diamonds. The company leads the world in diamond mining by volume. Mining takes place in Western Yakutia, the Arkhangels ...
, 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. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of electricity, and insol ...
and an annual production capacity of .
See also
*
List of mines in Russia
This list of mines in Russia is subsidiary to the list of mines article and lists working, defunct and future mines in the country organized by primary mineral output. For practical reasons, this list also contains stone, marble and other quarry, ...
*
Dalnyaya diamond mine
*
Zarnitsa mine
The Zarnitsa mine (, ; ) was the first kimberlite diamond pipe discovered in Russia. It is located in the Daldyn- Alakit kimberlite field, in the watershed of two small streams that flow into the Daldyn River.
It was discovered on August 21, 195 ...
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