There are large waste rock dumps and uneconomical ore storages when open pit mining is used. Mining companies must create these dumps and storages observing special rules, if mineral deposits might be utilized in future. The technological properties of ores and rocks as well as the conditions of forming and storage should be taken into consideration. It is possible to reach high productive efficiency if the market will demand these commodities.
Mining evolution is divided on the three phases in terms of the physical and intellectual activity: 1) primitive, 2) mechanization or physical liberation, and 3) automation or intellectual liberation. These phases correspond to the three levels of the mining cognition: empiric, analytic, and information technology (IT). The transition to the third phase is going now and it will be finished by unmanned mining technology creation in the foreseeable future. So the development of the third generation’s mine design will be the important task.
One of the main deep open pit mining problems is the wall stability for a long time. It is obvious that the basic area of stress concentration in deep pits is the lower edges of pit walls. We have been studying the possibility of reducing stress concentrations like these by means of the alteration of the open pit bottom part configuration. To do this, there was considered the shape with a smooth passage from walls to the bottom of the pit (by widening the berms in the lower part) instead of trapezoid shape. Calculations were carried out for deep open pits with a flat and rounded bottom across and along the strike of the ore body.
Development water sated tailing dump are accompanied explosive failure banks even at their height less 10 meters. Thereupon, the problem decision on research competence a slope and to a choice of optimum height production a dredge face «backdigger», established on the top platform tailing dump, will allow to reduce equipment downtimes and to increase intensity mining.
Subsoil is not just a source of mineral resources; it also serves as a burial site of industrial and domestic wastes, a storage place for oil and gas, and an environment for constructing underground facilities and creating preservations and nature sanctuaries. Subsoil area development is intensified and diversified with each passing year, exerting great influence on ecological systems and all their components. Special attention should be paid to terrain as upper facet of lithosphere, submitted to maximal impact of anthropogenic processes. Activation and emergence of natural and anthropogenic processes causes changes manifested in various combinations of negative events. Most important events include deformations of rock mass and land surface: exhaustion and pollution of ground and surface water, waterflooding and swamping of tapped sites, soil dehydration and salinization, air pollution, land site withdrawal from commercial circulation etc.
