Tailings Dam Breach Analysis: A Review of Methods, Practices, and Uncertainties
- PDF / 2,194,362 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 41 Downloads / 439 Views
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Tailings Dam Breach Analysis: A Review of Methods, Practices, and Uncertainties Hossein Kheirkhah Gildeh1 · Alexandra Halliday2 · Alfredo Arenas2 · Hua Zhang1 Received: 22 January 2020 / Accepted: 17 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Recent catastrophic failures of tailings storage facilities have highlighted the critical roles that dam engineers can play in ensuring public safety, and have motivated the mine waste industry to assess and improve the practice of tailings dam breach analysis (TDBAs). As industry moves towards a standard of no catastrophic failures, it is critical that practitioners, owners, and operators have a unified understanding when conducting TDBA, in order to provide a high level of confidence within communities and environments surrounding operational or closed facilities. Currently, uncertainties exist surrounding the industry’s standard practice in conducting appropriate TDBA. This paper provides a summary of the currently available approaches and models for TDBA and when it is appropriate to use a particular method. A critical review of key challenges of TDBA (release volume estimate, hydrograph development, and routing the breach hydrograph downstream) is also provided. This paper aims to be a thorough summary of what is known about TDBA and a reference source for engineers and researchers. Keywords TDBA · FLO-2D · Hydrograph · Dam break · Dam failure · Release volume
Introduction Public concern over the safety of tailings storage facilities (TSFs) has been growing as recent tailings dam failures have occurred in Canada (2014), Mexico (2014), and Brazil (2015 and 2019), resulting in significant impacts to people’s livelihoods, lives, and the environment, as well as significant costs to the dam owners. Breaches of tailings dams can produce sudden releases of water and sediment, and can take the form of an outburst flood, mud flow, or a combination of
* Hossein Kheirkhah Gildeh [email protected] Alexandra Halliday [email protected] Alfredo Arenas [email protected] Hua Zhang [email protected] 1
Golder Associates Ltd, 2800,700, 2nd Str. SW, Calgary T2P 2W2, Canada
Golder Associates S.A., Magdalena 181, Piso 3, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
2
both, depending on the sediment concentration of the tailings flow. Hundreds of dam breaches have been recorded worldwide during the last century (Shahid and Qiren 2010) and their consequences have been significant and, in many cases, catastrophic. Consequences of historic events have included loss of life, changes in downstream fluvial geomorphology and slope stability, and widespread contamination, resulting in loss of terrestrial and aquatic habitat. Despite high direct and indirect costs associated with these events, limited industry and scientific efforts have been focused on the study of their behavior and implications for mine hazard assessments and risk management. Dam breach inundation studies are produced for many TSFs as part of the life-of-mine reporting
Data Loading...