On June 1, 2026, a tunnel boring machine named “Steel Spine” completed its final tunneling operation 1,004 meters underground in Anshan, Liaoning Province.
The world’s first kilometer-deep shaft constructed using a full-section boring machine has been completed.
This is not just the achievement of an engineering node, but more like a declaration: China has officially declared itself among the global technological leaders in overcoming the world-class problem of kilometers-deep mining.
For a long time, mining deep underground iron ore in China has been like groping in a dark maze.
The traditional blasting method for breaking rock is not only inefficient and dangerous, but also relies heavily on imported technology.
The largest single underground iron mine under construction in China with a total investment of 22.9 billion yuan and reserves of 1.3 billion tons in Xi’anshan has given a completely different answer from the beginning of the design: using 100% independent and controllable domestic technology to create an intelligent green mine with “fewer people underground, automated ground, and intelligent dispatching”.
Put up a “steel backbone” and face the enemy head-on underground.
When digging to a depth of 1,000 meters underground, the first “stumbling block” encountered is hard rock.
The traditional drilling and blasting method opens a kilometer-deep shaft, with monthly progress often measured in hundreds of meters and full of risks.
The answer for Xi’anshan Iron Mine is to build two real “national weapons” from scratch.
One is the “Steel Spine” used for vertical drilling.
Faced with the incurable problem of “slag discharge” from a thousand-meter deep well, which can be called “transporting garbage to the top of a 300-story building”, the R&D team drew inspiration from the traditional keel waterwheel and designed an intelligent vertical slag discharge system that can discharge up to 120 cubic meters of slag per hour.
Its original W-shaped cutterhead configuration also completely solves the equipment loss problem of eccentric wear of the cutterhead during hard rock excavation.
This set of equipment fills the gap in international full-section excavation equipment for wellbores with a depth of more than 1,000 meters, and also achieves the intrinsic safety of “drilling a well without going down the well”.
Another “Cornerstone” used to open up horizontal passages also performed amazingly.
Since its launch in December 2023, it has completed the excavation of 5,420 meters of auxiliary slopes, and the monthly footage has been stable at 300-400 meters, which is 4-6 times that of traditional blasting methods; most importantly, the number of construction personnel has been reduced from 40 to 10, completely solving the risk of injury caused by shock waves, harmful gases and pumice caused by blasting.
Growing a brain for mines: How can digital twins and AI make deep-ground operations transparent?
If the “Steel Backbone” and “Cornerstone” are the “iron steel” of the mine, then the intelligent management platform covering the entire life cycle is the “intelligent brain” of the mine.
In the past, underground construction relied on plan drawings. Once the geology was complicated, collisions could easily occur between teams working in the same space.
Xi’anshan Mine broke this “blind box” management model and built a three-dimensional digital smart model that integrates mining, geology, engineering, safety and other fields.
In the smart hall on the surface, the large screen displays the details of 8 shafts with an average depth of 700 meters and 6,400 meters of tunnels in real time. The operating parameters, safety and environmental indicators of the “Cornerstone” are clear at a glance.
The function of this “brain” goes far beyond monitoring.
Through the “cloud-edge-end” three-level collaboration system, AI algorithms can achieve millisecond-level process control at edge nodes on the job site.
Data shows that this 5G +
The results of the AI intelligent production control system are quite hard-core: in the mineral processing process, AI process optimization increased the grinding efficiency by 18% and the magnetic separation recovery rate by 3.2 percentage points, which means that an additional 220,000 tons of iron concentrate can be recovered every year, and the annual direct economic benefit of a single mine exceeds 70 million yuan; in the safety dimension, it can accurately warn of toxic gas leaks and personnel violations, shorten the emergency response time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes, and achieve 180 consecutive days of safe production with zero accidents.
Behind green is not just “planting trees”, but also a subversion of the concept of mining.
Environmental friendliness is another background feature of this “mine aircraft carrier”.
For a long time, traditional mines have often been saddled with a negative image of destroying ecology.
The solution given by Xi’anshan is to “eliminate the disaster invisible” – replacing traditional blasting with fully mechanical excavation.
This low-disturbance mining technology itself has greatly reduced surface subsidence and ecological damage, and has been selected as a national green low-carbon advanced technology demonstration project.
A more macro result is that during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, Ansteel Group restored more than 5,000 hectares of iron ore mines, with a reclamation rate of 93.2%. Its ecological restoration model was the only case selected in the domestic steel industry and was included in the “Global Demonstration Case Collection of Chinese Enterprises Supporting NbS”.
The Xi’anshan Iron Mine is planned to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2027. The 30 million tons of iron ore mined annually by then will inject a shot in the arm into the security of the country’s steel industry chain.
Looking back on this process, it not only built a mine, but also contributed a set of “Anshan Plan” from equipment, technology to management to the industry.
When “drilling wells without sinking” turns from a slogan into reality, when digital twins make operations under a thousand meters like desktop operations, when environmental pollution gives way to ecological restoration – the future of China’s deep earth resource development is already clearly visible.
