| A full-blown armada of technical means
was committed to the development work. Winning of the uranium-bearing
rock was by blasting work: blast holes were drilled in the rock, and
the subsequent blast fragmented the rock material. The ore-bearing rock
was then hauled away. At times, more than 150 vehicles were committed
to the haul job. The trucks used were of Soviet manufacture: SIS of
3 tonnes capacity at the beginning, KRAS of 12 tonnes capacity later.
Such payload pales in comparison with the off-highway trucks used by
Wismut GmbH today in the framework of open pit backfilling and which
carry up to 136 tonnes. Dumping of the waste rock was by conveyor belts
and stackers.
In 1976, ore production from the Lichtenberg open pit came to a halt
when the advancing pit hit the boundary of the town of Ronneburg to
the north and that of the Schmirchau underground mine to the east. The
various mines at the site then used the worked-out open pit as an internal
dump until 1990. When remediation started as directed by Federal law,
the remedial concept for the Ronneburg site proposed the complete backfilling
of the former open pit.
In detail, it proposes the relocation of all waste rock piles located
south of the A4 motorway (with the exception of pile #381) into the
worked-out Lichtenberg open pit. Early in 2008, the Schutzdamm Ronneburg mine dump was the last to be relocated at the Ronneburg site, thus bringing mine dump relocation to an end.
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