Ore is mined underground at Cadia from the Cadia East deposit using the panel cave form of the block cave method.
Mine development at Cadia East commenced in 2012 with commercial production following in 2013 and is now a very large-scale underground mining operation adjacent to the Cadia Hill open pit.
Current mining operations in production at Cadia East consist of three mature panel caves and two developing panel caves.
Caves in production
PC1-1, PC2-1 (PC2-West), and PC2-2 (PC2-East) are in production and have been for some time.
Cadia East is accessed via two declines, the main access decline, and the conveyor decline.
Panel Cave mining from Cadia East with underground crushing and conveyor to surface.
The mining method applied at Cadia East is panel caving, a variant of block caving.
Extracting ore by panel caving involves a series of steps:
* development of an access decline to the bottom of the orebody, an undercut level (to blast the ore), an extraction level (to remove the ore) and drawbells (through which ore gravitates from the undercut level to the extraction level);
* undercutting a block of ore to induce caving of the rock mass (which results in “fragmentation” or breaking of the ore);
* removal of the broken ore from the extraction level via load-haul-dump fleet to underground crushing stations; and
* transportation of the crushed ore via conveyor to a coarse or ........
