Kiruna Mine

Our route this morning took us through Vittangi and Svappavarra on our way to Kiruna and the nearby village of Jukkasjaavi, which are famous for the worlds largest underground iron ore mine and the Ice Hotel respectively.

Our first stop was Jukkasjaarvi which turned out to be a very small village almost entirely composed of buildings and facilities associated with the Ice Hotel. But, as was to be expected at this time of year, no Ice Hotel. Well there was one block of ice put on display for tourists which we later found out was replaced every couple of days.

Our timing at Jukkasjaarvi was not good for a tour of the facilities related to the Ice Hotel so we headed off to Kiruna in the hope of taking one of the tours of the LKAB Mine. At the tourist office we booked ourselves on the afternoon tour and then hung around until the appointed time.

It was difficult to appreciate the size of this mining complex, but we got our first hint when the bus taking the group to the mine did not stop after entering through the mines security gates but simply continued to a mine entrance and proceeded to drive into the mine along a paved road. After some minutes we pulled up in front of doors to the mines Visitors Center which we were told was at the 540m level.

During the next few hours we learned that there was approximately 400 km of paved roadway inside the mine and that the current working level of the mine was at a depth of 1360m. The ore from the mine is mostly processed into iron ore pellets and that most of this is shipped by train to the Norwegian port of Narvik. That the trains make 9 trips per day and each trip carries 69 wagons and each wagon carries 100 tons of pellets. All very impressive statistics.

The body of ore that is being mined at Kiruna is shaped like a slice of meat in a sandwich. The "bread" on each side of the meat is non ore bearing earth, the sandwich stands with the meat at an angle of something like 80 degrees to the horizontal. Thus the ore body goes not quite straight down into the ground. At the surface the ore body is some kilometers wide. The original mining operations here in the early 1900s was an open pit mine and was working the top edge of the "meat" but eventually it was too difficult to get at the ore through an open pit so the work went under ground.

Now the reason for all this geometric detail is that it has an impact on the town. As the ore is removed there is a gap left between the two slices of "bread" on each side of the "meat". The slice of bread on top collapses into that gap causing a subsidence at ground level. It just so happens that the town of Kiruna stands on the top edge of that slice of bread and hence the town is slowly falling into the ever growing subsidence hole caused by the mining. There are plans afoot to move, over the next 20 years, major sections of the town to areas not subject to subsidence. In addition to all this information we got to look at a number of the large pieces of equipment used in the mining operation.