Isolated in the thick ice and snow of the Russian Far East, this gold mine is one of the most difficult to mine in the world.
Russia is the country with the largest reserves of minerals and energy resources in the world, but because the country is located in high latitudes, with a cold climate all year round, many lands have seemed isolated for many years, silhouette rare living human.
The Kupol Gold Mine is such a place. Located north of the Arctic Circle, in the Chukotka Autonomous Region of northeastern Russia (Far East), the Kupol Gold Mine is also 220 kilometers from the nearest town. Getting there was difficult. It was even more difficult to stay there.
The Kupol gold mine has been discovered since the 1930s. Gold veins buried under the ice in this remote part of Russia have been mined by prisoners. Many people have tried to access gold mining here, but due to extremely extreme weather conditions, down to -50 ° C, they have to give up gold mining.
Almost 7 decades of isolation, this place finally has a human figure.
Today people are more and more dependent on gold. Gold remains one of our most precious resources. Not only is it a wealth of jewelry, but gold is an essential ingredient in everything from smartphones to the latest HIV and malaria diagnostic kits.
This means that no matter how hot it is, even at the end of the earth, people still have to travel to these “frozen hells” to support themselves.
In 2007, Kinross Gold of Canada purchased the entire Kupol gold mine for $ 700 million and began mining with specialized equipment in 2008.
In 2011, the Kupol gold mine produced 2 million ounces of gold and over 20 million ounces of silver. In 2019, this company mined 20% of the total gold in the world, Mining.com said. Kinross Gold owns two Kupol and Dvoinoye gold mines in Russia.
In February 2021, on the official Kinross Gold website, the detailed plan for gold mining was announced at the Kupol mine. Thus, around 2025, the Kupol gold mine will be fully exploited.
Before that, it took 5 years to build the mine. Kinross Gold employs 1,200 workers, most of them from Brazil, to work in the gold mines. Of course, this is hard work, workers / employees have to work 12 hours a day for two consecutive months before taking two months off.
THE GOLD ROUTE
There are 2 ways to access the Kupol Gold Mine. One is by plane (Kupol airport is 12 kilometers north of it) and the temporary 360 kilometer route is only accessible from January to April each year (month of summer to avoid excessive cold). This road is also known as the Winter Road – the only inland entrance to Kupol from the port town of Pevek.
Kinross Gold rebuilt this road every year between November and January, with construction requiring temperatures of -25 degrees Celsius or lower. Equipment, supplies and fuel needed during the winter months must be ordered 2 years in advance and shipped to the port of Pevek, which is only open 3 months in the summer.
In 2008, the winter road served 1,944 truck trips to transport 3,000 units of containers, 60,000 tonnes of materials and 25,000 tonnes of diesel.
At all other times of the year, the Kupol Gold Mine is only accessible by helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
While in the 1930s people could not access the Kupol Gold Mine, until now (21st century) Kupol Gold Mine is proud to be the most advanced mine in the world. Workers extract around 21 tonnes of gold each year.
To do this, Kinross Gold has built facilities for Kupol in a very comprehensive way, creating favorable working conditions for workers. Workers’ wages are 25% higher than the regional average. The $ 40 million labor camp features a full-size gym, gym, pool table, music room, library, prayer room, television, and video library.
A 900-meter-long closed tunnel, dubbed the “Arctic Corridor,” allows workers to move between the camp and the mine without the cold in winter.
Russian photographer Elena Chernyshova and journalist Andrey Jouravlev spent 10 days at the Kupol Gold Mine capturing images of the gold mine at Earth’s End as well as the lives of thousands of people in this cold and cold place. hard.
“The whole labor camp is like a moon base in the middle of a cold landscape,” she said.
Explore the Kupol Gold Mine through Elena Chernyshova / BBC Photo Series:
Winter Road – the only inland entrance to Kupol from the port town of Pevek.
The workers’ camp, inhabited by 1,200 people working in the Kupol mine.
Covered against the cold, the drills were shipped two years earlier.
Work continued around the clock, but only a handful of miners needed to go to the ground to reload and reinforce the walls.
Semi-automatic process of crushing and smelting ore.
Here people grow vegetables of all kinds to get fresh food.
When the work is finished, the miners divide their time between the sports hall, the television room, the library and the chapel.
