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Oil, Gas & Mining vocabulary · Environmental Impact & Closure

Tailings dam

Meaning in oil, gas & mining, with examples

nounCommon term

In oil, gas & mining, tailings dam means: An embankment built to hold mine tailings and water in a storage area. If it fails, a flood of mud can destroy villages and rivers downstream.

In Turkish: atık barajı, maden atık barajı

How it is used

The formal term is tailings storage facility (TSF). Engineers talk about dam raises, freeboard, seepage, piezometers and stability monitoring. Failures such as Brumadinho in Brazil in 2019 led to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) in 2020.

Example sentences

  1. Piezometers in the tailings dam are read every week.

  2. The tailings dam will be raised by five metres next year.

Common collocations

  • tailings storage facility (TSF)
  • dam raise
  • dam failure
  • dam safety review
  • tailingsThe finely ground rock and water left over after the valuable minerals have been removed from ore in a processing plant.
  • environmental impact assessment (EIA)A formal study of how a planned project such as a mine, pipeline or refinery will affect air, water, land, wildlife and local communities, and how those effects will be reduced.
  • reclamationReturning land disturbed by mining or drilling to a safe, stable and useful condition, for example by reshaping waste dumps, spreading topsoil and planting vegetation.
  • acid mine drainage (AMD)Acidic, metal-rich water that forms when sulphide minerals such as pyrite in mine waste or workings meet air and water. It can pollute rivers for decades.

More terms: Environmental Impact & Closure

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