PRODUCT FOCUS
ADVANCES IN
UNDERGROUND MINING SAFETY
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S
outh Africa is home to eight of the
ten deepest mines in the world,
while the remaining two — Kidd
Creek and Creighton — are both located
in Ontario, Canada. AngloGold Ashanti’s
Mponeng gold mine, located south-
west of Johannesburg, is currently the
deepest mine globally. The operating
depth ranged from between 2.4km to
more than 3.9km below the surface
by the end of 2012, with expansions
pushing the record to beyond the four-
kilometre mark.
That is harrowing, if you think of what
could go wrong: soft human bodies versus
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SEPTEMBER 2018
rock weighing thousands of tonnes. The
outcome is a given.
In its quest to dig ever deeper for richer
ore veins, the mining industry has had
to reconsider its take on human safety
underground, with technologies emerging
that could not only lessen human fatalities
but do away with humans entirely.
In late July, the Council for Scientific
and Industrial Research (CSIR) showcased
some of the latest technologies it has
developed for the mining sector. It was
here that Dr David Roberts, CSIR principal
researcher, highlighted that in the 1980s
and 1990s, South Africa had a very poor
safety record, but through interventions
and research, there have been significant
improvements “and it is now comparable
to international mining operations”.
Nevertheless, the fatalities continue,
with about 40% of underground fatalities
in gold mines owing to rock falls.
Technological advances
As unstable conditions are the greatest
cause of fatalities, predicting, assessing,
and minimising this hazard is top of mind
in underground safety developments.
Included in this is ground penetrating
radar (GPR), which is presently being