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All A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W
Mining
Work to create, strengthen and support excavations with the aim of extracting minerals (face work). Mining includes exploratory work, as well as shaft-drilling and preparing the mine for work directly at the face. Depending on the location, mines may be opencast (near the surface of the Earth) or underground (sub-surface).
Depending on the techniques and equipment deployed, mining may be mechanical (the most common form, using mining machinery), explosive (usually by igniting explosives inserted into pre-drilled boreholes, blast-holes or other excavations), hydraulic, geotechnical (extracting minerals by sublimation, leaching, dissolving, evaporation, etc), drill mining (used to extract oil, combustible gases, solutions, dissolved minerals, etc, through boreholes that may be several thousand metres long) or thermal (used only rarely for prospecting work in permafrost conditions).
In production terms, mining activities can be divided into deposit opening, preparation (of the open section of the deposit for development, i.e. its division into sections or blocks for excavation, transportation of rocks, materials and equipment, and movement of personnel), pre-production development (division into sections or blocks by access workings), face work and extraction (of minerals).
