What is Underground Mining?
Underground mining is the process of extracting minerals, rocks and other industrial materials other than oil, coal and gas from the earth through the development of shafts andentries from the surface to the deposits or seam before recovering the products and using underground extraction methods.
The shafts created in underground mining are usually too deep compared to surface mining methods.
While underground mining methods show higher cost than open pit, their complexity almost always means that there is opportunity in both productivity and cost improvement.
Operating expenditure is highly dependent on the mining method but also influenced by other factors
Block caving has the lowest associated operational expenditure of the underground hard-rock mining methods, and it comes closest to the average operating expenditure of an open-pit operation.
Stoping as currently implemented is the secondmost expensive mining method. With all else equal, mining methods that use long-hole stoping are among the lowest in terms of operating expenditure; however, the wide range of deposit geometries and productivities among mines and regions causes the average to rise above the room-and-pillar method.
