New global standards in Tailings Storage Facilities (TSF) Management aim to raise the bar in terms of TSF design, construction, operation, maintenance, monitoring and closure. The global standards introduce, for the first time, a real requirement to integrate all aspects of the life-cycle of a tailings dam. This includes legislative compliance, mining practices, mineral processing aspects, and community and stakeholder engagement.
Improvement in the state of best practice in tailings storage facility (TSF) management over the past decade have not reduced the average number of failures, making the recently published global TSF standards a welcome step forward.
This is according to Adriaan Meintjes, a principal geotechnical engineer at SRK Consulting South Africa, who says the new standards will help raise the general TSF state of practice in the mining sector.
Concern over TSF safety has been rising with continued and series TSF failures in recent years, with few mining countries being spared. one of the most well-publicised incidents was at the Mount Polley mine in Canada in 2014, a year that saw other incidents in the US, Brazil and Mexico. Globally, three more failures followed in 2015, four in 2016, and three in 2017.
There were four incidents in 2018, and sic in 2019, one being the failure at Brumadinho in Brazil which killed 270 people. This year, there have already been three TSG incidents, including a waste heap failure in Myanmar in which at least 126 people died.
SRK Contributors:
Adriaan Meintjes, Lyzandra Boshoff
