If you decide to find out which careers are the largest on the planet, you will find very, very conflicting information. Only after a long analysis does it become clear that, as a rule, all the articles talk about huge careers in which this or that useful mineral is extracted. But, unfortunately, with this approach, there is considerable confusion.
The two largest careers in the world
Everything becomes clear when the reader pays attention not to the extracted minerals, but to the depth of the quarry and the diameter of its bowl. And then unexpected news awaits us. It turns out that one of the largest quarries is in our country, in Russia. This, of course, is the Sibaysky quarry. He is the second largest in the world. The first place went to the copper ore type quarry located in Chile. Its bowl is elongated, its length is about four kilometers, and its width is almost three kilometers. The depth of the Chilean quarry is more than 850 meters. They have been mining ore for a very long time. Back in 1989, a small entrance to a simple mine was discovered here. Scientists have calculated and found out that the mine was created by the hands of people who lived already in 540 AD!
There are huge copper ore quarries in a number of countries, but all of them, unfortunately, are somewhat inferior in some way to the Chilean one. In our country, many mistakenly believed that the famous Yakut quarry Mir was the largest in the USSR. But its upper size is 1200 meters, and the depth is a little more than five hundred meters. Of course, Mir is one of the largest quarries in the world where diamonds are mined. But since this field is not currently being processed in an open way, it will never increase its parameters. Now only underground processing is used.
Of course, one can continue to cite countless examples with huge careers. But if you still calculate them only by size, and not by type and type of material mined, it turns out that the Sibaysky quarry is the second largest in size after the aforementioned Chilean. It is located in Bashkortostan, in the beloved Urals. The depth of the Sibay quarry is more than 578 meters, and the diameter of the bowl is about two thousand meters.
How did the Sibaysky quarry appear
This field was accidentally spotted by one of the local hunters who lived then in the village of Stary Sibay. When a hunter with his dog chased a fur-bearing animal that hid in its mink, he found a piece of unusual red clay. She was unusually heavy and this interested the hunter. Soon, geologists arrived at this place. It was they who determined that this piece is not clay, but brown iron, which contains a large amount of silver and gold. As you know, these metals accompany copper ores.
Further development
Already in the fifteenth year of the last century, an exploration mine was laid. But unfortunately, due to the Civil War and further devastation, the main body of ore was only reached in 1939. Five years later, a plant specializing in copper smelting was launched. Four years later, it was decided to build the first copper-sulfur plant in Bashkiria. At the same time, another miners' city was created at the same time with it, which was called Sibay. Now this city is convenient for living. It has two institutes, two schools and 3 colleges. In addition, there are fourteen schools in Sibay, one philharmonic society and a drama theater. It is worth saying that not every city of regional significance is so developed! Sibaysky quarry is adjacent to the settlement (you can ask the guards how to get to the quarry - it will tell you where the observation deck is). For this reason, all buildings with a height of more than 20 meters are resistant to earthquakes, as due to the work with the help of explosions in the quarry they created quite noticeable earthquakes. Even with five-story buildings, the wall thickness sometimes reaches seventy centimeters.
In 2000, 100 million tons of copper ore were already mined. And all this was given by the Sibay quarry. How to get to it? This is not difficult, because the quarry is located directly at the border of the city of Sibay.
