They are every bride’s dream and are so sought after people are willing to pay absorbent amounts for very small qualities. Poets and bards have glamorized these tiny powerhouses in word and song throughout history. No, they are not celebrities, although they have been in movies, and they are not rock stars even though they are rocks. Marilyn Monroe said it best in her movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with the famous song Diamonds are A Girls Best Friend.
Over $8 billion of Diamonds are mined every year. Approximately 250 tons of ore must be mined and processed to produce a single one-carat, polished, gem quality diamond. 100 million carats are mined each year, but only a quarter of these will be considered gem quality. That is one reason diamonds are so rare and expensive.
Diamonds are not all glamour and glitter. Diamonds are used for certain industrial applications and in some areas of the world children and adults under extreme conditions mine Diamonds. These are called Conflict Diamonds or Blood Diamonds.
Diamonds are found all over the world, but 80% of all diamonds come from just seven sources: Angola, Australia, Botswana, Namibia, Russia, South Africa and Zaire. Most Blood Diamonds come from Western Africa and other worn torn areas. Blood Diamonds may be forever but the lives lost mining them are not.
Most modern mines operate under strict environmental standards, but not all. In conflict areas and in some old mines these standards are not in place.
I was wondering how much ore has to be processed to generate one year’s supply of diamond gemstones. We know that it takes about 250 tons of or to get one carats gem stone quality Diamond. And, of the 100 million carats mined each year 25 million carets are gem quality. So if we times 25 million carats times 250 million tones we get 6.25 Quadrillion tons of ore. This can’t be correct, but that’s what I get from the figures I found.
Just as a frame of reference, the Hoover Dam is 6.6 million tons. Therefore, it would take about 905 Million Hoover Dams to equally the ore removed to find 25 Million Carats of Diamonds.