Bingham Canyon Mine: The World's Deepest Open Pit Mine

Bingham Canyon Mine: The World's Deepest Open Pit Mine

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50 Comments

  1. All The Happy Squirrels on March 21, 2023 at 7:45 am

    Another interesting mining town to cover is Butte, Montana. The whole city is a superfund site and there are a number of interesting stories for the various Factboi channels.

  2. Haworth Lowell on March 21, 2023 at 7:48 am

    Wow, I thought this was going to be about VP Harris!

  3. TheRedbikemaster™ on March 21, 2023 at 7:52 am

    I live 45 minutes away from this mine. I got to visit the visitor’s center when I was a teen. Looking down into the mine warps your mind. It’s just unreal.

    Edit: now do US Magnesium which is just down I80 from this site. It’s a Superfund site. They have a perimeter with warnings signs all around it hundreds of feet away

  4. Galactico42 on March 21, 2023 at 7:54 am

    Nothing quite like going for a hike 15 miles away from this thing and looking out across the valley to see the giant negative space where an effing mountain used to be. What an embarrassment.

  5. Derek S on March 21, 2023 at 7:55 am

    Do a video about the Anaconda Companies – or specifically you should dig into the open pit mine that is slowly filling with toxic sludge in Butte, MT – the one and only “Berkeley Pit”

  6. Chris Schmidt on March 21, 2023 at 7:56 am

    Crazy how close this is to salt lake city! The great salt lake is a bigger problem for Utah.

  7. BrianFillups on March 21, 2023 at 7:58 am

    Loved listing to this Simon!! Spent the first 16 years of my life in Magna.

  8. ProductBasement on March 21, 2023 at 7:58 am

    6:43 "leaving behind gobs of useless slurry called ‘gang’ which is deposited in large pits"
    I wonder where the dirt extracted from those pits went??

  9. Connor O'shaughnessy on March 21, 2023 at 7:59 am

    Don’t forget all the arsenic dumped into the great salt lake either that’s cropping up as a major problem here in Utah as the lake dries up and the toxic dust get blown around by the wind

  10. Joe on March 21, 2023 at 7:59 am

    the EPA is a borderline terrorist organization. and for anyone thinking the mine should be closed…..fine. and where are the raw materials going to come from to make your cell phone or PC that allows you you to get on the internet and spew such stupidity????

  11. Inservio on March 21, 2023 at 8:00 am

    Well shit that seems like a bit of an oversight, not including lead arsenic and asbestos in the list of things that magic underwear nonsense is supposed to stop by way of magic. Good thing the magic skyman narrative is a human construct with human failings, and not a supposedly infallible and omniscient invisible pervert with a voyeur kink and boundary issues.

  12. Nikita Webber on March 21, 2023 at 8:01 am

    "The planets resources are running out" yeah bull crap. Deepest mine is 1.2k and that’s the deepest. Imagine how much resources if went as deep as 2k?? Whats the diameter of the planet? Imagine if worked out how to drill a little deeper to do geothermal anywhere on the planet

  13. Kc Taz on March 21, 2023 at 8:03 am

    "Tweet
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    Why I’m totally okay with banning people from the commentis:"
    ,
    Dang it, I just discovered your channel and love many of your videos. Then, I checked your Twitter. Anyone who feels the need to ban people, is a person with serious issues who is, also, afraid of contrary opinions and who feels they can’t counter stupid information with facts. Countering dumb info with facts is the sign of an intelligent person. Wanting to ban people, even dumb people, is the sign of a person who has no confidence in truth and facts prevailing and who is insecure in his abilities to fight wrong information.
    I really want to like and trust the information you present but between this and your belief in "climate change," I am having serious doubts about the validity of the rest of your information which I had, previous to this, been very much enjoying.

  14. Marigold The Midnight Rider on March 21, 2023 at 8:04 am

    Never realized how much Simon virtue signals. Or rather his script writer do. Kinda hope it bites them in the ass.

  15. SquigglesZero on March 21, 2023 at 8:04 am

    There is a yo mama joke here somewhere.

  16. Terrance Roff on March 21, 2023 at 8:04 am

    prohibitively expensive.. actually.. no. The mine is now sufficiently deep to be tapping the richest of the ore bearing strata. I could see this mine operating with into the 2060’s and possibly beyond if they can get a strong handle on the ecological damage due to the inherent effects of open pit mining and smelting. Time will tell.

  17. Wade on March 21, 2023 at 8:04 am

    I wanna know more about that radar landslide system

  18. James Cadigan on March 21, 2023 at 8:04 am

    Funny he didn’t mention that the new "hip" place to build a new home around salt lake is in a community called Daybreak. It is all reclaimed land at the foot of the mine. People are flocking to live there and breathe the dust blown off of the mine. Just wait for the cancer rates to explode around here. My late brother had an unexplained brain tumor… Thanks Rio Tinto 👎

  19. Inservio on March 21, 2023 at 8:05 am

    Wait… not a word on how this is all going to be returned to nature? Cleanup? Replanting? Forestry? Just… nothing?

  20. Brandon Sandoval on March 21, 2023 at 8:05 am

    I moved to Utah county to attend school a few years ago and pollution here is bad. Mountains are pretty, sure, but everything else is just kind of gross. I would drive out by the mine and refineries for work sometimes and it’s just gross. Also pretty sure something in the air here is irritating my skin and lungs real bad as I’ve never had irritation this bad before coming here. And worst of all, the residents here are just like, oh that smog, it just happens. and I want to explain to them, that it’s not normal.

  21. Joan Huffman on March 21, 2023 at 8:06 am

    Why does New Jersey have the greatest number of toxic waste sites, while Washington DC has the greatest concentration of lawyers? New Jersey had first choice.

  22. Pwemium Shiz on March 21, 2023 at 8:08 am

    There is a small city right next to this mine called Copperton. It is such a cool place and it has an amazing park that you can hang out at all day. Going there is literally like stepping back in time 50 yrs bc all the houses are the same pretty much and were built 70 plus yrs ago

  23. Creation Inspired on March 21, 2023 at 8:09 am

    Thank you simon for always providing an escape from this hornet of a woman 👌👍

  24. Anthony French on March 21, 2023 at 8:09 am

    I’ve come to love this show and your British humor. the amount of information you have is amazing.

  25. rizky fanory on March 21, 2023 at 8:11 am

    can you speak bit slower and make it shorter..

  26. Gregory B on March 21, 2023 at 8:11 am

    Everyone who watches this video is and will use a lot of copper in your life , we can blame them, but we need the product and we want it cheaper. So who’s to blame?????????

  27. Mark R. Taylor on March 21, 2023 at 8:11 am

    Obviously, COMMUNIST CHINESE ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA! American mining makes America 🇺🇸 GREAT!

  28. Gary Johnson on March 21, 2023 at 8:12 am

    How can you talk about Bingham Canyon without mentioning Daniel Jackling? I’m an old guy but when I was young there wasn’t a family in the valley that didn’t have a family member that depended on the mines in that canyon for work, especially during the depression. You can bad mouth those companies all you want but they put a lot of food on a lot of tables. If you don’t like it here, I hear California has vacancies.

  29. Shelby Lester on March 21, 2023 at 8:14 am

    I grew up at the base of that mine. Literally a mile away.

  30. Dan Sands on March 21, 2023 at 8:14 am

    You know what solar panels, wind turbines, and (potential) fusion reactors have in common? They use vast amounts of copper. Spending 2/3 of the video talking about how much worthless desert this mine has contaminated is not helping anything.

  31. Den Henderson on March 21, 2023 at 8:15 am

    America is not a country, US is.

  32. Surfer Dude on March 21, 2023 at 8:16 am

    I lived in Utah from 1980 to 1982. The contamination of the water in Magna was so bad that we liked to say, "If The Lord had walked on the water in Magna, it wouldn’t have been a miracle.". During a temperature inversion, smog from the smelters made the air quality so bad, it made LA look clean. I hope things have improved since then, but I have no reason to believe that they have.

  33. Michael Pipkin on March 21, 2023 at 8:17 am

    So this is about every woman radio host?

  34. Tizzy Lento on March 21, 2023 at 8:18 am

    "From the widest valley, to the deepest trench, holes define who we are and where we’re going."

  35. PurelyFixed YYC on March 21, 2023 at 8:19 am

    An actual fact, the biggest hole resides here in Calgary Alberta directly imported from Shropshire england. That stupid hole took my house, both my vehicles and left me with my dog and a shit ton of debt. One massive gaping hole!

  36. Emilio perez on March 21, 2023 at 8:20 am

    The crazy thing is that I live in magna and I didn’t know about this.

  37. B. A. D. on March 21, 2023 at 8:22 am

    My husband worked at Kennecott for 31 years. He had asbestos fibers in his lungs. He had helplessly watched several of his friends die on the job. One fell down the gigantic pit crusher that received the ore from the railroad cars. Others just dropped dead on the job.

    The toxic mess is contributing to the pending disaster of the Great Salt Lake drying up, causing toxic dust to blow everywhere. Between this and the huge oil refineries and bad air and frantic traffic, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to move here but it’s getting so many lifelong residents can’t afford to live here as it’s "gentrifying" like crazy.

  38. Boris Chang on March 21, 2023 at 8:24 am

    No. disrespect but: boring!

  39. TheMilitarynut on March 21, 2023 at 8:25 am

    You should do an episode on Butte, Montana (USA) It was at one point named the richest hill on earth and the entire town, while beautiful and full of history, is the one of (if not the) largest superfine cleanup site in the United States.

  40. Michelle Taylor on March 21, 2023 at 8:26 am

    I can see the mine from my backyard. It’s pretty amazing.

  41. Wombat Willy on March 21, 2023 at 8:28 am

    My ex wife when she was drunk

  42. Someone Bald on March 21, 2023 at 8:28 am

    Maybe not a megaproject, but perhaps you could do an item about the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

  43. Capt Spaulding on March 21, 2023 at 8:29 am

    I used to live in Tooele and Magna.

  44. Joey Jones on March 21, 2023 at 8:29 am

    No copper no phones no laptops no Internet no electricity respect the red metal mofos!!

  45. Mondo_ stunts on March 21, 2023 at 8:32 am

    I remember seeing a video about the other large open pit copper mines in the world and how they were poisoning the air and water. Then I remembered we live next to an even bigger one here. The concrete plant gets some criticism and so does the oil refineries by the capital.
    Also pretty big rail road yards here

  46. Kyloren Kardashian on March 21, 2023 at 8:34 am

    I for real thought this video was going to be about my friends mom

  47. Keith Dolence on March 21, 2023 at 8:35 am

    I worked there! Did the timing and blast design work for them

  48. Charlie Duke on March 21, 2023 at 8:37 am

    As a native Utahn, I’m pleasantly surprised by this video, thanks for making it.

  49. Scott Free on March 21, 2023 at 8:39 am

    Regulators shouldn’t try to stop mining, just make it less harmful. We need mining. Better us than China

  50. Mark O on March 21, 2023 at 8:40 am

    It’s unfortunate that our species can’t manage to extract certain natural resources without poisoning everything within a thousand miles radius.

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