Russia today is in the process of modernizing its legislative system especially in occupational safety and health (OSH), labor protection, industrial safety, and emergency response management. The current legislative system mostly focuses on providing health compensation and medical, social assistance to injured workers while the new one focuses on risk prevention, aiming at raising the safe production level, cultivating a worker safety culture, and protecting workers lives through optimizing the risk management system and operation guidelines. The new standards require companies to incorporate occupational risk evaluation into their management system standards.  This paper, based on a case study of the Bodaibinsky open\|pit gold mine in the Irkutsk region, discusses the modern risk assessment methodology, recognizes the evaluation must start with hazard identification, and catalogues risk sources. In the case study, “risk scoring” and (mathematical) “simulation matrix” methods were used to assess occupational risks. The results show that flying rocks, dust and excessive noise at blasting site are unacceptable risks. Enforcement of safe production regulations (i.e., comply with safety standards and technical requirements, provide workers with protective gears) can lower the risks level from high to an acceptable level. This paper describes in detail the high risk occupation and compiles a risk assessment manual. To improve working conditions is to first eliminate the risk factors affecting drillers and blasters and provide these workers with personal protective equipment(PPE).