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In mining, tailings or tails are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed.
The Val di Stava Dam collapse occurred on 19 July 1985, when two tailings dams above the village of Stava, near Tesero, Italy, failed. It resulted in one of Italy's worst disasters, killing 268 people, destroying 63 buildings and demolishing eight bridges.
A dam failure or dam burst is a catastrophic type of structural failure characterized by the sudden, rapid, and uncontrolled release of impounded water or the likelihood of such an uncontrolled release. Between the years 2000 and 2009 more than 200 notable dam failures happened worldwide.
Romania ranks tenth in the world in terms of the diversity of minerals produced in the country. Around 60 different minerals are currently produced in Romania. The richest mineral deposits in the country are halite.
The Doñana Disaster, also known as the Aznalcollar Disaster or Guadiamar Disaster, was an industrial accident in Andalusia, southern Spain. On 25 April 1998, a holding dam burst at the Los Frailes mine, near Aznalcóllar, Seville, releasing 4–5 million cubic metres (3,200–4,100 acre⋅ft) of mine tailings. The acidic tailings, which contained dangerous levels of several heavy metals, quickly reached the nearby River Agrio, and then its parent river, the River Guadiamar, travelling about 40 kilometres (25 mi) along these waterways and covering an area of 4,600 hectares before they could be stopped. The Guadiamar is the main water source for the Doñana National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest national parks in Europe. The cleanup operation took three years, at an estimated cost of €240 million.
Certeju de Sus is a commune in Hunedoara County, Transylvania, Romania. It is composed of nine villages: Bocșa Mare (Boksatelep), Bocșa Mică, Certeju de Sus, Hondol, Măgura-Toplița (Magura), Nojag (Nozság), Săcărâmb, Toplița Mureșului (Toplica), and Vărmaga (Vormága).
The Merriespruit tailings dam disaster occurred on the night of 22 February 1994 when a tailings dam failed and flooded the suburb of Merriespruit, Virginia, Free State, South Africa. Seventeen people were killed as a result.
The Certej mine is an epithermal gold-silver deposit located in the Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania in western Romania. The deposit extends from surface and was previously mined as an open pit. Certej contains proven and probable reserves of approximately 2.5 million ounces of gold and 16.3 million ounces of silver.
The Church Rock uranium mill spill occurred in the U.S. state of New Mexico on July 16, 1979, when United Nuclear Corporation's tailings disposal pond at its uranium mill in Church Rock breached its dam. The accident remains the largest release of radioactive material in U.S. history, having released more radioactivity than the Three Mile Island accident four months earlier.
The 2000 Baia Mare Cyanide spill was a leak of cyanide near Baia Mare, Romania, into the Someș River by the gold mining company Aurul, a joint-venture of the Australian company Esmeralda Exploration and the Romanian government.
An industrial accident at a caustic waste reservoir chain took place at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in Ajka, Veszprém County, in western Hungary. On 4 October 2010, at 12:25 CEST (10:25 UTC), the northwestern corner of the dam of reservoir number 10 collapsed, freeing approximately one million cubic metres of liquid waste from red mud lakes. The mud was released as a 1–2 m (3–7 ft) wave, flooding several nearby localities, including the village of Kolontár and the town of Devecser. Ten people died, and 150 people were injured. About 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi) of land were initially affected. The spill reached the Danube on 7 October 2010.
Roșia Montană Project was a proposed gold and silver mine in Roșia Montană, Romania. If approved, it would have become Europe's largest open-pit gold mine and it would have used the gold cyanidation mining technique. The project met with widespread protests in 2013 that indefinitely delayed the project, which saw its end in 2021, when Roșia Montană became a part of the UNESCO World Heritage list and was also included in the List of World Heritage in Danger. Following these measures, any mining activity in Roșia Montană is prohibited in the future.
The Omai Gold Mine is located in Guyana on the north coast of South America near the west bank of the Essequibo River in the interior of the country. Access to Omai is by road from the capital of Georgetown on the coast, and from the town of Linden approximately 60 km away. There is an operational airstrip on site which can accommodate aircraft from Georgetown. Gold mining at Omai is known from at least the 1880s, and when it was developed as a large scale mine in 1992 by Cambior, the mine was the largest gold mine in the Guiana Shield and a major source of income and employment in Guyana. During the period from 1992 – 2005, Omai produced 3.7 Moz of gold at an average grade of 1.5 g/t Au from the Fennell and the Wenot open pits.
Gold cyanidation is a chemical process for extracting gold from low-grade ore. Used in Romania for decades, the process came into debate following the 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill and proposal of the Roșia Montană Project, which would create the largest operation for gold extraction using cyanides in Europe.
The Mariana dam disaster, also known as the Bento Rodrigues or Samarco dam disaster, occurred on 5 November 2015, when the Fundão tailings dam at the Germano iron ore mine of the Samarco Mariana Mining Complex near Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, suffered a catastrophic failure, resulting in flooding that devastated the downstream villages of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu de Baixo, killing 19 people. The extent of the damage caused by the tailings dam collapse is the largest ever recorded with pollutants spread along 668 kilometres (415 mi) of watercourses.
The Padcal tailings spills of August–September 2012 were a series of mine tailings spills from Tailings Pond 3 of the Philex Mining Corporation's Padcal mine in Benguet Province, Philippines. The incident began on August 1, 2012, with a massive release on the order of 5 million tonnes or 3 million cubic meters of water and tailings from a breached drainage tunnel in the pond. The effluent flowed into the Balog River down to Agno River and San Roque Dam. At least four more major discharges were reported: on August 4, 11 and 30, and September 13. The total weight of solids discharged is given by Advocates of Science and Technology for the People, citing a Mines and Geosciences Bureau Report dated September 17, 2012, as 21 million tonnes. The Center for Science in Public Participation gives the volume discharged, for an incident that they date as August 2, but likely refers to the whole August–September series, as 13 million cubic meters. The spill was ten times larger than the 1996 Marcopper mining disaster, making it the country's biggest mining disaster by volume of toxic tailings.
Sisson Mine is a proposed tungsten and molybdenum mine which would be sited near the town of Stanley, 60 km North-West of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. The mine would be among the world's largest tungsten mines, with reserves equating to 227 kilotonnes of elemental tungsten (W). The claim owner, Sisson Mines Ltd., proposes to mine 30,000 tonnes per day of ore which contains on average 0.06 per cent tungsten trioxide (WO3) and smaller amounts of molybdenum. The tungsten component of the ore would be refined into an intermediate product ammonium paratungstate (APT) for shipment. Five hundred fifty seven thousand metric ton units (mtu) of APT would be produced per year, which equates to 4,457 tonnes of tungsten metal per year.
The structural failure of tailings dams and the ensuing release of toxic metals in the environment is a great concern. The standard of public reporting on tailings dam incidents is poor. A large number remain completely unreported, or lack basic facts when reported. There is no comprehensive database for historic failures. According to mining engineer David M Chambers of the Center for Science in Public Participation, 10,000 years is "a conservative estimate" of how long most tailings dams will need to maintain structural integrity.