Reported tailings dam failures: a review of the European incidents in the worldwide context
A detailed search andre-evaluation of the known historical cases of tailings damfailure was carried out. A corpus of 147 cases of worldwide tailings dam disasters, from which 26 located in Europe, was compiled in a database. This contains six sections, including dam location, its physical and constr...
| Autores: | , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2008 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) |
| Repositorio: | Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.ufc.br:riufc/64704 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/64704 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Environmental hazards Tailings dam failures Europe Mono and multivariate statistical analysis Mine tailings |
| Sumario: | A detailed search andre-evaluation of the known historical cases of tailings damfailure was carried out. A corpus of 147 cases of worldwide tailings dam disasters, from which 26 located in Europe, was compiled in a database. This contains six sections, including dam location, its physical and constructive characteristics, actual and putative failure cause, sludge hydrodynamics, socio-economical consequences and environmental impacts. Europe ranks in second place in reported accidents (18%), more than one third of them in dams 10–20 m high. In Europe, the most common cause of failure is related to unusual rain, whereas there is a lack of occurrences associated with seismic liquefaction, which is the second cause of tailings dam breakage elsewhere in the world. Moreover, over 90% of incidents occurred in active mines, and only 10% refer to abandoned ponds. The results reached by this preliminary analysis show an urgent need for EU regulations regarding technical standards of tailings disposal. |
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