Mineral demand rapidly increases; as a result, underground mining activities gradually dig into the earth’s crust to deeper levels. For instance, the depth of coal mines has reached 1500 m, whereas the depth of mines for nonferrous metals has already achieved around 4500 m. Deep mining faces a number of technical and environmental challenges, first of all, great rock mass stresses, high temperature and long winding distance. The traditional technologies are hardly capable to provide the development and extraction efficiency and safety. That is why the need in developing and implementation of new modern mining technologies arose. In roadheading, TBM (tunnelboring machine) method is gradually introduced. A TBM combines the functions of rock breaking, support installation, mucking and conveying rock. In mining industry, smart mining based on mechanized and automated mining methods is successfully implemented at coal mines. Besides, a technical concept of fluidized mining for deepseated mineral resources (6000 m and more) was proposed. This paper presents the review of the current global status of deep mining and highlights some of the newest technological achievements in roadheading and the mineral extraction processes.

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The smooth blasting method has been researched, developed and strongly applied for long-term underground construction, such as principal mining excavations, tunnels and hydroelectric projects... with the main purpose of minimizing the explosion impact on rock and creating a well-shaped boundary. In this research, a software was developed to establish automatically the tunnel contour blasting passport in AutoCAD. Using the software in each blast design model, it is quickly possible to determine number of blastholes, specific charge, specific drilling and drawing automatically of blasting passport in AutoCAD. The interaction between the software and AutoCAD is a new and important factor that helps to complete an automatically closed cycle on computer from introducing parameters to designing blasting passport in AutoCAD, thereby contributing to increase efficiency of production and minimize risks in blasting works.

The paper discusses the main disadvantages of strip and underground mining methods and possibilities of eliminating the disadvantages through introducing a combined technology of coal deposit mining. Combined coal mining technology is the method comprising elements of several geotechnologies, for example, underground and strip mining, as well as, possibly, underwater mining, borehole and other techniques of deposit mining. The combined coal mining technology provides for unified layout for opening, development, production and processing of reserves for the whole LoM on the basis of general technological solutions made in advance. Such complex solutions for opening and development of deposit reserves within the opencast and underground mining contour allows minimizing the volume of openings and reducing the time for commissioning, investment costs, as well as decreasing the costs for aerage, drainage, rock mass hauling and land reclamation. Substantiation of deposit opening options should comprehensively take into account technical, organizational, and economic factors [34–37]. Analysis of the options as exemplified by the Makar’evskoe coal deposit development in Kuzbass allows to conclude that the combined method is promising and promotes increasing optimal volumes of coal production, while reducing the deposit development time by about 15 %, and increase the net present value compared to underground and opencast mining options more than 5 times.