Alrosa has confirmed it will build a new mine at Mir, where eight miners died during catastrophic flooding in August 2017.
Russia’s state-controlled miner says it has identified reserves of almost 38m carats at the mine.
It will spend up to $1.5bn (RUB126bn) on construction of the Mir-Gluboky project, a completely new mine, in the frozen depths of Siberia, and expects the first commercial diamonds to be mined in 2030-2031.
“We have been designing a new mine in recent years, now it is fully designed. The company is already allocating investment funds,” Aysen Nikolayev, head of the Russian republic of Yakutia, told Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, according to an Interfax report.
“We have received approval for this from the country’s government. All decisions have been made through the supervisory board, and we are launching this major project this year.”
Commercial open pit mining began at Mir in 1957, and it went on to become the fourth deepest hole in the world. Production was switched to underground in 2001.
In 2017 water from the depleted open pit flooded the underground mine, completely destroying the mine and its workings. Eight workers died. Another 143 were rescued and the mine had remained closed ever since.
There has, however, been widespread speculation that Mir, which produced over $13bn of diamonds over its lifetime, would eventually re-open.
At the time of the flood it was producing 3.8m carats a year, more than 10 per cent of Alrosa’s total output.
In January 2020 the company began explorations at a depth of 1,200 metres to 1,600 metres below the surface to assess the potential of the Mir kimberlite pipe.
Last month Sergey Ivanov, the company’s outgoing CEO, said that re-opening the mine was still a possibility, but would depend on market conditions.
Pic of the Mir mine, courtesy Alrosa