Opencast mine Schöningen
The Schöningen opencast mine is a former opencast mine in the Helmstedt lignite mining area in Schöningen in Lower Saxony . It was operated from 1979 to August 30, 2016 and served to supply the nearby Buschhaus power station with lignite .
geography
The Helmstedt brown coal is located on the northwestern edge of a 70 kilometer long and 4 to 7 kilometer wide basin that extends from Helmstedt to Staßfurt . This "Helmstedt-Staßfurter Mulde" is divided in the middle by a salt dome into an east and a west half. Lignite has been mined in the area since the 19th century. The Schöningen opencast mine was the last opencast mine in the area. It lies between the town of Schöningen in the west, the Helmstedt district of Offleben in the east and the municipality of Hötensleben in the south. The opencast mine was located directly on the inner German border , whose border security systems were preserved at this point after the fall of the Wall and can be viewed in the Hötensleben border monument .
Dismantling
With a total area of 600 hectares, it consists of the north field , the south field and the remaining coal pillar workshops . The northern field has already been charred and backfilled. The other two fields were shut down on August 30, 2016.
Finally, the overburden and coal in the southern field were mined with bucket wheel excavators and transported away with conveyor systems. The overburden was continuously transported to the backfilling of charred open-cast mines. The coal was transported directly to the power plant's stockpile. A total of 18,000 cubic meters of overburden and coal were transported over a total of 10 km of conveyor belts at a speed of 15 km / h per day.
No belts were used in the “Remnant Coal Pillar Workshops” mining field, only smaller excavators and dumpers .
coal
The lignite in the Helmstedt district is around 50 million years old. In order to extract one ton of brown coal, 1.2 cubic meters of overburden have to be moved. The Schöningen brown coal has a calorific value of 10.4 MJ / kg. The water content is 40%, the ash content 12.5%, the sulfur content 2.25% and the alkali oxide content 4.05% ( salt coal ).
archeology
North of the Schöningen opencast mine, the 7,000-year-old Esbeck earthworks were archaeologically examined in 1982 before the Buschhaus power plant was built . Since further archaeological sites were to be expected on the approximately 6 km² open pit, the archaeologist Hartmut Thieme from the Institute for Monument Preservation initiated the long-term project of archaeological research in the Helmstedt lignite mining area with the Braunschweig coal mines in 1983 . In the following years, a large number of superficial sites from the Neolithic , Bronze Age and Iron Age were discovered and excavated. Between 1994 and 1998 archaeologists from the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation found eight wooden javelins from the Paleolithic , the Schöninger spears , on the western edge of the opencast mine . The spears, which are over 300,000 years old, were found together with skeletal remains of horses and are interpreted as evidence of a Paleolithic big game hunt on the bank of a former lake.
Not far from where the spears were found on the edge of the open-cast mine, the Schöninger Speere “ Paläon ” research and experience center was built in 2013 , in which the finds from past and ongoing archaeological excavations are processed and exhibited.
Reuse
In 2019, considerations became known to leave the Schöningen-Süd opencast mine, which covers around 500 hectares, to its own devices so that a wilderness emerges from it. This could serve as a habitat for various animal species, such as wild horses , bison , water buffalo , Heck cattle , reindeer and elk . The site could be made touristic for visitors through remote observation with drones or through guided tours with off-road vehicles. It could also serve environmental education. It is planned to prepare a feasibility study for the “wilderness” project.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Strohmann: Last ton of coal mined in the Helmstedter Revier. In: Helmstedter Nachrichten. helmstedter-nachrichten.de, accessed on September 29, 2016 .
- ↑ Memorial of the division of Germany in Marienborn: Hötensleben border monument. Retrieved August 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Markus Brich: “Dare to go wild” as a future idea for Schöninger opencast mine in Helmstedter Nachrichten of January 29, 2019
- ↑ Hannah Schmitz: Lies is campaigning for Salzgitter AG's CO2 project in the Braunschweiger Zeitung on July 19, 2019
Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 26 " N , 10 ° 59 ′ 33" E