[Music] this is Bingham mine it produces enough ore each year to rewire every home in the USA and Mexico it's the largest open pit mine in the world the size of Bingham Canyon mine continues to expand all the time today we're about 2 and 1/2 miles wide at our widest point and we're nearly a mile deep at our deepest point as we get bigger we move back in about 1,000 foot cuts um those tht cuts will take us 7 years to get to ore and we'll continue to mine or after that to produce the copper that w
e need Matt ler is the operations manager in charge the does provide for everything that we need if it can't be grown it it has to be mined whether you look at the Copper that's in your house in terms of wiring or your plumbing fixtures your cell phone hybrid cars copper is essential to our way of life this is lowgrade Bingham Canyon minor in this case it's a limestone ore the shiny spots that you see in there are pyite material The Ore itself only contains a tiny amount of copper so they have t
o dig up a lot of it to get enough of the pure metal that's why being a mine is so [Music] huge we've been mining for over a 100 years we've made 19 million tons of copper in that time and we've produced about 8 billion tons of material with machines just like [Music] these some seams of copper are so deep that they have to dig for S years through waste rock just to reach [Music] them everything about the mine is massive these giant trucks each weigh more than a jumbo jet and work Round the Cloc
k to remove the rubble I've been driving this truck for about 7 years now it's a good feeling driving these it's it's pretty exciting they burn about 100 gallons per hour when they're driving up the hill loaded when you're up in these trucks driving you don't realize how big things are the the mine wouldn't make any money if if it wasn't for the shovels trucks carrying the ore and the the waste out of here the giant diggers and trucks are just to take the rock away the only way to get it out of
the ground is with something a little more powerful [Music] three blasts a day and 100 Years of mining has created the largest excavation in human [Music] history
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