Vhe legend tells of dwarves in hooded cloaks and with long beards, who fetch gold and silver from the depths of the mountains. What nonsense, from start to finish. In Germany’s largest mine, it’s not about glittering precious metals, but about comparatively mundane mineral salt. And you don’t wear a thick coat there, but short blue pants and a sleeveless T-shirt with a colorful palm tree motif printed on it.
At least that’s how Steffen Quaas demonstrates it in district 6 of the Zielitz potash mine in Saxony-Anhalt. The miners here call everything that happens less than 500 meters below the surface “Hollywood mining”. Area 6 starts at almost 1000 meters. Steffen Quaas still has work to do around 350 meters below that day. At Querort 70/S, holes have to be drilled into the rock for the next blast. Mining has its own vocabulary, the place name takes some getting used to. More catchy is that this is Germany’s deepest workplace.
The mine in Zielitz, half an hour’s drive north of Magdeburg, is not only the largest and deepest, but also the youngest in Germany. It was put into operation fifty years ago. The other two superlatives only brought Zielitz the exit from hard coal mining. In August 2018, the Ibbenbüren colliery in Westphalia was shut down, and it went down 200 meters further. The black coal for the German power plants is now imported from abroad. The white potash salt, on the other hand, is a German export hit. The operating group K+S produces around 1.3 million tons of fertilizer from the 19 million tons of crude salt that are mined in Zielitz every year. Most of it is shipped to Brazil via Hamburg so that soya and corn can grow in the fields there.
Steffen Quaas doesn’t need a ship to get to his place of work. He needs a shaft. At around 30 kilometers per hour, the conveyor cage rushes down 700 meters vertically. A large-format elevator, up to 92 miners fit in. But only if you follow the set-up rules posted on a board at the entrance. This is necessary at the beginning and end of the shift.
From the shaft to Querort 70/S, the jeep continues. A bumpy ride through a network of underground roads with curves and junctions, with ventilation locks, with flashing lights and alarm signals, past workshops and petrol stations, loading bays and conveyor belts. Always downhill following the salt floe that lies diagonally in the rock. And the deeper it gets, the warmer it gets.
Hence the shorts, hence the t-shirt. Hence the reminder from the plant management to take a well-filled large water bottle with you on this journey towards the center of the earth.
At Querort 70/S the temperature rises to 49 degrees
At the shaft exit it was 32 degrees. At the district manager’s office at a depth of around 1000 meters it is 36 degrees. At Querort 70/S the thermometer in the jeep reads 49 degrees. It’s always warm down here. But now it’s still summer outside. The fresh air blown into the depths is not cool enough to do much against the embers from the core of the earth.
Who can work eight hours a day in this heat? With a helmet on your head and safety boots on your feet, with salt dust on your skin and the roar of the fans in your ears? Steffen Quaas, 44 years old and a tree of a man, just shrugs his shoulders and says: “My motto is: rather sweat than freeze.”
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