Chile miners on the verge of being saved

Chile's mining minister announced that a shaft wide enough to provide an escape for 33 trapped miners should reach the men by today and that their rescue could begin from two to 10 days after that.

Once the drill breaks through to the miners’ cavern some 2,000 feet underground, the time frame for the rescue will be determined by a technical evaluation of the risks involved, Laurence Golborne said, meaning they could be pulled out as early as Monday or Tuesday.

The countdown hinges on whether the rescue team decides to use steel piping to line the walls of the shaft and reduce the risk of a rock fall or other obstruction jamming an escape capsule that will carry the miners up, Mr Golborne said.

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But inserting straight pipe with walls of half-inch-thick steel through a curved and fractured section of the shaft also risks clogging the hole or knocking rock loose.

The alternatives are leaving the raw “live rock” unreinforced, inserting a sleeve in the top section only, or encasing the entire shaft, a process that would delay the rescue for another 10 days after the decision is made.