Chuquicamanta
Chuquicamata and El Teniente
The World’s Largest Copper Mines
AT THE CENTER OF WORLD’S LARGEST underground copper mine, El Teniente, is a huge rock crusher. It is controlled by a very ordinary looking man sitting before five TV screens, each revealing part of the rock crushing operation: The TVs show gravitational feeding of mined rock from the stopes into ore cars; movement and dumping of cars onto conveyor belts; the disgorgement of the rocks into the crusher; and the operation of the huge pestle-like crusher itself.
As I watch the man at work it strikes me again that there are no really ordinary people in this world. He manipulates seven cameras with a keyboard, changing the view, making remote adjustments. He controls all the aspects of the feeding and crushing of ore. In this relatively litigious-innocent part of the world, I am allowed to stand behind him and talk with him as he works. I have listened to a half hour lecture on safety, am dressed in some 40 pounds of miner’s regalia: hard hat, hearing protection, electric torch, respirator with CO filter to be used in case of fire, hard toed rubber boots, and rain gear.
Within the mountain are some 2,500 kilometers of lighted tunnels, the crusher and mill, and many large chambers or rooms, in addition to the mine itself. Large passenger buses and heavy equipment traffic is controlled by traffic lights. Fresh air is pumped in continuously. It is wintertime so at this altitude there is little water; it has frozen at the surface where a blizzard rages, product of a cold front from the south. There is flooding in the Rancagua Valley below. To reach the crusher one must drive to the fourth level of the mine (there are now 8 of a projected 20). The crushing operation is at a point about one and one half kilometers below the snow capped mountain peak, and three kilometers into the mountain from the entrance. My video camera vainly tries to suck in the sights and the noise, unable to fully capture the feel or the scope of the place.
Sobrante 