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A tailings dam is typically an earth-fill embankment dam used to store byproducts of mining operations after separating the ore from the gangue. Tailings can be liquid, solid, or a slurry of fine particles, and are usually highly toxic and potentially radioactive.
The dam failures marked a series of changes to the civil engineering and mining community, and the design of tailing dams. Upstream tailing dams were opted for other means such as downstream tailings dams, rock-fills, and earth dams, despite the higher costs. [13]
The Ridgeway mine was a gold and silver open-pit mine near Ridgeway, South Carolina. In its eleven years of operation between 1988 and 1999, it produced 1,500,000 ounces of gold and 900,000 ounces of silver. [1] The mine's two ore bodies are part of the gold-rich [3] Carolina Slate Belt rock package that runs through the upstate Piedmont foothills.
The Bruno Creek Tailings Impoundment is a tailings dam on Bruno Creek, 19 mi (31 km) southwest of Challis in Custer County, Idaho. It serves to store tailings for the nearby Thompson Creek Mine. At 550 ft (168 m) tall, it is the second tallest center-line tailings dam in the world.
The dam will hold 570,000,000 metric tons (560,997,721 long tons; 628,317,447 short tons) of tailings and the mine is expected to produce 546,000,000 metric tons (537,376,764 long tons; 601,861,976 short tons). [3] Upstream of the dam, a series of channels and embankments divert water from the Ayash River from entering the reservoir.
On April 16, 1958, with mining and processing plants still operational, a combination of poor design, neglect, heavy rainfall and a reported earthquake caused the #7 tailings dam at Mailuu-Suu to fail. About 50% of the entire volume of the dam flowed into the swift Mailuu-Suu River, only 30 metres (98 ft) downhill from the breach.
Mine tailings are usually produced from the mill in slurry form, which is a mixture of fine mineral particles and water. [2] Tailings are likely to be dangerous sources of toxic chemicals such as heavy metals, sulfides, and radioactive content. These chemicals are especially dangerous when stored in water in ponds behind tailings dams.
The Mount Polley mine's tailings facility experienced a dam breach and tailings spill that began 4 August 2014. The four square kilometre tailings pond spilled an estimated 25 billion litres of contaminated materials into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, Quesnel Lake , and Cariboo River, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for ...