How ore is quarried in Arctic Norilsk
The oldest quarry in the Arctic city of Norilsk looks like an industrial amphitheater. The crater reaches a depth of 400 meters and is up to a whole kilometer wide. The bottom of the crater is filled with blue water.
But, when you go up onto the viewing platform at the very top, everything looks so small, including the huge ‘BelAZ’ dump trucks hurrying up and down the winding quarry roads.
To think a single wheel of these dump trucks is taller than a human and weighs a whopping 5.5 tons, which is as much as an African elephant!
The ore lies inside a mountain and, to get to it, the mountain needs to be "stripped" using explosives. Then, it is taken away by ‘BelAZ’ trucks to the dressing factories and, from there, to industrial plants.
As of today, ‘Medvezhy Ruchey’ (literally ‘Bear's Brook’) is the only place where Norilsk ore is extracted by open-pit mining (most ore is mined at a depth of up to two kilometers).
The ore is also unique: It contains 15 minerals, from which nine non-ferrous metals are extracted, including copper, cobalt, nickel, platinum and gold.
