Tailings facilities - a Canadian approach

摘要

John Engels reports on a visit to Canada in July to see large active tailings facilities, a trip enabled by a scholarship from the Institute's Bosworth Smith Trust Fund. Tailings impoundments are fast becoming a huge environmental concern for the mining industry. As technology progresses the industry has the ability to mine lower grade deposits, creating greater volumes of waste. In fact, the mining of old tailings impoundments and reprocessing what was once the waste from past mining activities has already begun in South Africa. This is far more economical than exploiting new similar grade underground deposits. My visit to Canada was primarily to see large active tailings facilities, and to meet the personnel involved with operating and maintaining the tailings disposal operations with the aim of gathering information for my EC Tailsafe research project entitled 'Sustainable improvement in safety of tailings facilities'. Tailsafe (www.tailsafe.com) hopes to set stringent legislation and standards for Europe on the construction, maintenance and management of tailings facilities, and help to prevent the failures that have occurred in recent years. As well as the many universities, research and government organisations around Europe contributing to the project, there is an international forum for industry to be made aware and contribute to the projects development.