Ammonium nitrate (AN)-based explosives remain among the most widely utilised bulk explosives in mining operations and represent a critical control domain within mine health and safety (MHS) systems. Despite increasingly mature operational procedures, process safety frameworks, and regulatory controls, high-consequence risks associated with explosives operations continue to emerge through fragmented life cycle governance, behavioural deviations, inconsistent verification practices, and limited operational visibility across interconnected operational interfaces. This paper proposes an integrated life cycle governance framework for AN-based explosives by combining process safety principles, behaviour-based safety (BBS), cleaner production approaches, and life cycle stewardship within existing MHS systems. The study maps operational risks across the explosive’s life cycle, including raw material procurement, manufacturing, storage, transportation, on-site handling, charging, blast execution, and post-blast review activities. Rather than positioning sustainability as a parallel objective, the framework integrates environmental discipline and operational stewardship directly into safety-critical operational controls and governance mechanisms. The paper further examines behavioural failure pathways that may gradually weaken safeguard integrity through procedural shortcutting, communication failures, normalisation of operational deviations, incomplete verification activities, and inconsistent supervision practices across explosives operations. In parallel, cleaner production principles are positioned not only as environmental management initiatives, but also as operational governance mechanisms supporting material accountability, process discipline, residue minimisation, spill prevention, and life cycle operational visibility. Operational reflections informed by explosives-related activities in Indonesia further demonstrate that governance effectiveness within geographically dispersed and contractor-intensive mining environments depends heavily on behavioural reliability, layered operational controls, reporting culture, and life cycle coordination across interconnected operational stages. The findings suggest that operational vulnerabilities frequently emerge not from detonation science itself, but from fragmented governance interactions across the explosive’s life cycle. Accordingly, this paper argues that future explosives governance may require stronger integration between process safety, behavioural reliability, environmental stewardship, life cycle traceability, and operational accountability within MHS systems. The proposed framework contributes to ongoing industry discussions regarding integrated governance approaches for explosives-intensive mining operations and broader high-risk industrial systems.