Mir Mine
About Mir Mine
A massive open-pit diamond mine, 1.2 km in diameter. A popular story claims helicopters are banned overhead because downdrafts have sucked aircraft into the pit, but no such accident is documented. Produced about 10 million carats of diamonds a year in the 1960s. Open-pit mining ended in 2001; an underground mine opened in 2009 but flooded in August 2017, killing eight miners, and was shut down.
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