Going into a mine can represent going to the depths of an issue or condition in the dreamer’s life. It can also signify the inner terrain of the subconscious from which something valuable is being mined.
(1) Ammunition for firing from mortars and smoothbore recoilless guns. Various types of such shells include fragmentation, high-explosive fragmentation, and high-explosive shells, which are designed to destroy enemy manpower and weapons or defensive structures; incendiary, smoke, illuminating, and leaflet shells, which are used to perform auxiliary combat missions; and training shells. The unit of fire for smooth-bore recoilless guns includes shaped-charge (antitank) shells and high-explosive fragmentation shells. The loaded shell consists of a body (steel or refined cast iron) with a charge of explosives, primary and supplementary propellant powder charges, a fuse, and a stabilizer. On the body of the shell there is a cylindrical part, and there are ribs on the vanes of the stabilizer to ensure centering and correct movement of the shell along the barrel. The stabilizer (which is steel or aluminum) gives the shell stability in flight.
(2) A combat means for setting up explosive obstacles that are used to inflict losses on the enemy, inhibit his advance, and make the waging of combat more difficult. There are naval mines and land mines.
(3) An obsolete term in fortifications for “tunnel.”
an enterprise designed mainly for the underground mining of ores, rocks bearing chemical elements, and construction materials. A mine may be composed of several adjacent shafts with independent openings and separate ventilation systems for the underground excavations. There may be common surface equipment and auxiliary plants, such as crushing and sorting plants, concentration plants, electromechanical and repair shops, warehouses, and maintenance installations. Enterprises engaged in the open-pit mining of ore are sometimes called mines, as in the case of the Magnitogorsk Mine. The type of mining operations carried out depends on the excavation system adopted.
Mines with high output capability provide the best return for capital investment. In the USSR, for example, more than half the underground mining of iron ore is concentrated at nine of the country’s 37 mines, with annual output reaching more than 3 million tons. The annual production capacity of the S. M. Kirov Apatite Mine in the Khibiny Mountains is 7 million tons. The annual production of the F. E. Dzerzhinskii Mine in the Krivoi Rog Iron Ore Basin is 12.1 million tons; this figure includes the 7 million tons mined annually in the Gigant Shaft. As of 1973, the First Soligorsk Potassium Mine produced 11 million tons annually. The normal depreciation period for mines in the USSR when veins are being worked varies from eight to ten years but may reach 25–40 years or more for large deposits.
Outside the Soviet Union and the socialist countries, there were in 1970 more than 180 mines with annual production of greater than 1 million tons; of these, 34 mines produced more than 3 million tons annually. The largest mine is the Kiruna Iron Mine in Sweden, which in 1973 produced 27 million tons.
In the USSR, mining excavations are up to 1 km deep at the V. I. Lenin Mine in the Krivoi Rog Iron Ore Basin (iron ores) and at the Oktiabr’skii Mine in Noril’sk (complex ores). Gold is mined at depths of greater than 3 km in India and the Republic of South Africa.
M. D. FUGZAN
(Russian, fugas), an explosive charge housed in a waterproof casing and placed just below the surface of the ground or water. Detonated with a clockwork fuze—either electrically or by a flame—or with a mechanical pressure-firing device, mines explode without warning, inflicting losses on the enemy and hindering his advance. Such weapons are used in military obstacles.