Until fairly recently, Down-The-Hole (DTH or DHD) hammer drilling was never really a factor in large scale open pit surface mining. It was a method confined to water well drilelrs, aggregate quarries and limestone mines where the hole size rarely exceeded 6-1/2" (165 mm). Also it was...
Surface instability is possible when mining geothermal energy. There can be some surface instability caused during the extraction of heat energy. The construction of large geothermal power plants can trigger an earthquake as the drilling takes place between tectonic plates. Therefore, miners need to m...