Bad Schlema visitor mine
| Bad Schlema visitor mine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| other names | Marx-Semler-Stolln | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Start of operation | 15th century | ||
| End of operation | 1991 | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Uranium ore | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 50 ° 36 '5.4 " N , 12 ° 39' 24.4" E | ||
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| Location | Bad Schlema | ||
| local community | Bad Schlema | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Erzgebirgskreis | ||
| country | Free State of Saxony | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Schneeberg | ||
The Bad Schlema visitor mine is a show mine operated in the former object 02 of the SDAG Wismut in the Bad Schlema area . From 1990 to 1996 it was possible for visitors to enter shaft 371 at times as far as the -1530 m level. With the progressive flooding of the mine, a new location for a visitor mine had to be found. That is why the renovated shaft 15 IIbis was opened as a visitor mine on July 3, 1999, making the Marx-Semler-Stollnsohle accessible to tourists.
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The mining in Schlema was for centuries largely theoretical. Iron , copper and silver were extracted sporadically in smaller pits . Between 1908 and 1911 Richard Franz Friedrich discovered strong radium-containing waters in the Marx-Semler-Stolln (also Markus-Semmler-Stollen ) and helped the community to an economic upswing by using it. From October 31, 1924, it was allowed to use the title Radiumbad Oberschlema.
The first mining activities can be traced back to the 15th century. After the Second World War, uranium mining was started by the Soviet Union and the further development of the spa took a back seat.
With German reunification in 1990, uranium mining in the Schlema-Alberoda deposit was stopped. The mine operator, SDAG Wismut , became Wismut GmbH, which has been a federally owned company that has been rehabilitating the legacies of uranium mining since 1991. The former mine that down to a depth of around 1800 m below the 330 m above sea level. NN in the Marx-Semler-Stolln fixed zero bottom penetrated, was gradually flooded. In the summer of 2009, the water level was around 80 m below the surface of the earth .
The deposit is one of over 1,000 uranium leading courses of the world's leading uranium Gangerzlagerstätten.
Data and figures on the mine
The greatest extraction was achieved in 1963 when around 12,000 miners produced 4,553 tons of uranium. The effort for this was very high; the ventilation and weather cooling alone had an installed capacity of 50 megawatts . This corresponded to about 0.2% of the total energy requirement of the former GDR .
On January 2, 1988, on the blind shaft 383 IIIbis a sole m at a depth of 1,800 ascended that at that time the largest open-minded depth was Germany.
In 1991 ore mining was stopped in the entire mine. Shaft 371 was expanded into a visitor mine, but closed again in 1996 due to the increase in flooding for visitors.
In 1999 the Ring Deutscher Bergingenieure took over shaft 15 IIb, which was sunk in 1980, and expanded it into a visitor mine under the direction of former miners. It was opened on the Rote Kamm and takes visitors over a cable car to a depth of 46 meters. There is the former Steigerstube, which is now used for explanations as part of the mine tours. It can also be used for smaller events and also for wedding ceremonies in the mining tradition. As part of the guided tours, equipment powered by compressed air is demonstrated and various dismantling schemes are outlined.
Even laypeople can recognize the different times in which the tunnel and adjacent stretches were driven. The first stretches from the 15th century are hardly more than head-high, shoulder-wide and barely paved. Lines from the late 19th and early 20th centuries became significantly larger with a width and height of around 1.80 meters due to the use of heavier mining equipment (including Hunte ). With the start of large-scale uranium mining at the beginning of the 1950s, stretches with heights and widths of more than 3 meters were driven forward in order to be able to create heavy equipment on site.
