Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations (Sudbury INO) consist of two underground mines (Nickel Rim South Mine and Fraser Mine), Strathcona Mill and the Sudbury Smelter.
All these operations are hard rock mines, with excellent rockmass quality. The depth of mining is sufficient to develop pervasive stress fracturing around most openings.
Two mining method are used at Sudbury Operations depending on the spatial orientation of the orebody as well as size and geometries:
- Cut and Fill mining is used when the orebody is dipping lower than 50o or sub-horizontally
- Blasthole and Longhole is used when the orebody is above 50o.
Nickel Rim South (NRS) is a modern mine using blast-hole open stoping with backfill as a means of bulk mining.
Cut and Fill – Plan view
Access x-cut are driven from main ramp and drifts to the ore zones. Ore is mined upwards by successive breasting cuts techniques. When the ore zone exceeds 11 m width post pillar pattern is applied. Post pillars (5m X 5m) are established between 11m width panels. These post pillars are carried through subsequent cuts.
Cut and Fill – Cross section
X-Cut distance from the main access permits to mine 5 cuts. First access is at -15% and other access by increment of 7.5% after to a maximum of +15%. Hydraulic backfill is used to fill finished cut.
Blasthole & Longhole Stoping
Blasthole mining is used where geometry and geologic confidence in th ........
