Largest diamond mine in the world ~ The Awesome Facts

The mine was discovered on June 13, 1955 by Soviet geologists Yuri Khabardin, Ekaterina Elagina and Viktor Avdeenko during the large Amakinsky Expedition in Yakut ASSR. They found traces of volcanic rock kimberlite which are usually associated with diamonds. This finding was the first success in the search for kimberlite in Russia, after numerous failed expeditions of the 1940s and 1950s. For this discovery, in 1957 Khabardin was given the Lenin Prize, which was one of the highest awards in the Soviet Union.

The development of the mine had started in 1957 in extremely harsh climate conditions. Seven months of winter per year froze the ground into permafrost, which was hard in winter, but turned into sludge in summer. Buildings had to be raised on piles, so that they would not sink in summer, and the main processing plant had to be built on a better ground found 20 km away from the mine. The winter temperatures were so low that car tires and steel would shatter and oil would freeze. During the winter, the workers used jet engines to defreeze and dig out the permafrost or blasted it with dynamite to get access to the underlying kimberlite. The entire mine had to be covered at night to prevent the machinery from freezing.

In the 1960s the mine was producing 10,000,000 carats (2,000 kg) of diamond per year, of which a relatively high fraction (20%) were of gem quality. The upper layers of the mine (down to 340 meters) had very high diamond content of 4 carats (0.80 g) per tonne of ore, with the relatively high ratio of gems to industrial stones. The yield decreased to about 2 carats (0.40 g) per tonne and the production rate slowed to 2,000,000 carats (400 kg) per year near the pit bottom.
The largest diamond of the mine was found on 23 December 1980; it weighed 342.5 carats (68 g) and was named “26th Congress CPSU”. The mine operation was interrupted in 1990s at a depth of 340 m after the pit bottom became flooded but it eventually resumed.

525 meters deep, 1.2 kilo meters in diameter. The air zone within this mine is closed for helicopters - happened a few accidents when they were " pulled in" by downward air flow.