There used to be a town here for mine employees, called Chuquicamata, but in 2007 the population was forced to leave because the mine has gotten too big and too close to the town. They have all moved to nearby Calama and I believe the company had to offer them houses at dirt-cheap prices as incentives to get them to leave.
abandoned playground of chuqui: in the background, hills of refuse from copper processing
street in chuquicamata
The mine pit is 5 km long, 3 km wide, and 1 km deep. The copper concentration in the rock is 1%. Which sounds like nothing to me. For those of you with poor math skills, that means that in order to extract 1 ton of copper, they have to haul and process 100 tons of otherwise useless rocks, leaving them with 99 tons of refuse. But apparently it is worth it, even in these days when copper prices have apparently fallen significantly. Also, there are other mineral by-products which are marketable as well.
They are in the process of connecting the main mine with two other mines right next to it: Mina Sur (“south mine”) and Mina Name-of-some-dude-which-I-forgot. Once the three mines are connected, it will again be the largest in the world, and the length of the mine pit will be around 15 km.
the mine pit
There are three truck sizes at “Chuqui”: large, larger, and largest. The largest is the largest in the world, and, naturally, german.
The smallest, (
a truck in the truck garage, having it's 7 ton tires checked.
More about the biggest truck in the world, here, in German.
to give you an idea of the scale of the pit: do you see the giant truck in this picture?!
pools where copper is being processed
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