Описание (английский)
The Mir mine, also called the Mirny mine, is an open pit diamond mine located in Mirny, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian region of eastern Russia.
The mine is 525 metres deep (1722.44 feet) (4th in the world) and has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft), and is one of the largest excavated holes in the world.
Open-pit mining was discontinued in 2001. Since 2009 it has been active as an underground diamond mine.The diamond-bearing deposits were 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 the volcanic rock kimberlite,
which is usually associated with diamonds.
This finding was the second
success in the search for kimberlite in Russia, after numerous failed
expeditions of the 1940s and 1950s. (The first was Zarnitsa mine, 1954.) For this discovery, in 1957 Khabardin was given the Lenin Prize, one of the highest awards in the Soviet Union.